In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end to the whole. — Jacob Burckhardt Copy Share Image
The whole life of Demosthenes... leaves the impression of a melancholy state of things, and of the brazen insolence of wickedness. A particularly striking idea of how things really were in Greece can be obtained from one feature of life… — 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
