The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail… — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
To each eye, perhaps, the outlines of a great civilization present a different picture. In the wide ocean upon which we venture, the possible… — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
Great men are necessary for our life, in order that the movement of world history can free itself sporadically, by fits and starts, from… — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or… — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and… — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
There might be a fact of the greatest significance reported by Thucydides which will only be recognized as such a hundred years from now. — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
History is on every occasion the record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another. — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
The state incurs debts for politics, war, and other higher causes and 'progress'. . . . The assumption is that the future will honour… — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
True universality does not consist in knowing much but in loving much. — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
Neither in the life of the individual nor in that of mankind is it desirable to know the future. — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
