46 quotes
Though the web of history cannot be unravelled into separate threads without destroying it, a certain amount of subdivision of the subject is, for practical purposes, essential.
The Age of Revolution (1962)
Unlike the word 'communist', which always signified a programme, the word 'socialist' was primarily analytical and critical.
How To Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism (2011)
These three factors—the influence of the French Revolution, the rational economic argument of civil servants, and the greed of the nobility, determined the emancipation of the peasants in Prussia between 1807 and 1816.
The Age of Revolution (1962)
The world that went to pieces at the end of the 1980's was the world shaped by the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Age of Extremes (1992)
The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one's contemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century.
The Age of Extremes (1992)
In analysing both agricultural change and economic growth in general, non-economic factors cannot be divorced from economic ones - certainly not in the short run. To separate them is to abandon the historical, that is the dynamic, analysis of the economy.
On History (1997)
Why brilliant fashion-designers, a notoriously non-analytic breed,sometimes succeed in anticipating the shape of things to come better than professional predictors, is one of the most obscure questions in history; and, for the historian of culture, one of the most central.
The Age of Extremes (1992)
As I think back, I ask myself, again and again: was there an alternative to the indiscriminate , brutal, basically unplanned rush forward of the Five-Year Plan? I wish I could say there was, but I cannot. I cannot find a answer.
The Age of Extremes (1992)
The greatest cruelties of our century have been the impersonal cruelties of remote decision, of system and routine, especially when they could be justified as regrettable operational necessity.
The Age of Extremes (1992)
For most of history and over most of the world (China being perhaps the main exception) the terms in which all but a handful of educated and emancipated men thought about the world were those of traditional religion, so much so that there are countries in which the word ‘Christian’ is simply a synonym for ‘peasant’ or even ‘man’.
The Age of Revolution (1962)
The fundamental fact about Britain in the first two generations of the Industrial Revolution was, that the comfortable and rich classes accumulated income so fast and in such vast quantities as to exceed all available possibilities of spending and investment.
The Age of Revolution (1962)
The past is therefore a permanent dimension of the human consciousness, an inevitable component of the institutions, values and other patterns of human society. The problem for historians is to analyse the nature of this 'sense of the past' in society and to trace its changes and transformations.
On History (1997)
Surrealism was a genuine addition to the repertoire of avant-garde arts, its novelty attested by the ability to produce shock, incomprehension, or what amounted to the same thing, a sometimes, embarrassed laughter, even among the older avant-garde.
The Age of Extremes (1992)
The era of liberal triumph began with a defeated revolution and ended in a prolonged depression. The first forms a more convenient signpost for marking the beginning or end of a historical period than the second, but history does not consult the convenience of historians, though some of them are not always aware of it.
The Age of Capital (1975)
Nothing like nationalism is discoverable elsewhere, for the social conditions for it did not exist. In fact, if anything the forces which were later to produce nationalism were at this stage opposed to the alliance of tradition, religion and mass poverty which produced the most powerful resistance to the encroachment of western conquerors and exploiters.
The Age of Revolution (1962)
There are cases - perhaps mine is among them - where this discovery can be particularly helpful. Much of my life, probably most of my conscious life, was devoted to a hope which has been plainly disappointed, and to a cause which has plainly failed: the communism initiated by the October Revolution. But there is nothing which can sharpen the historian's mind like defeat.
On History (1997)
Having established the limits beyond which partisanship ceases to be scientifically legitimate, let me argue the case in favour of legitimate partisanship, both from the point of view of the scientific or scholarly discipline and from that of the cause to which the scholar feels committed.
On History (1997)
The best approach to this cultural revolution is therefore through family and household, i.e. through the structure of relations between the secondhand generations. In most societies this had been impressively resistant to sudden change, though this does not mean that such structures were static.
The Age of Extremes (1992)
When we write the ‘world history’ of earlier periods, we are in fact making an addition of the histories of the various parts of the globe, but which, in so far as they had knowledge of one another, had only marginal and superficial contacts, unless the inhabitants of some region had conquered or colonized another, as the west Europeans did the Americas.
The Age of Capital (1975)
From the historians' point of view these assumptions must be realistic or they are junk. If we use the assumption of perfect foresight by businessmen to construct data, the question of its empirical validity is crucial. Altering the assumptions, whether about the model or about the data, can make a substantial difference to both the data and the answers.
On History (1997)