Skip to content

The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways.

— William H. McNeill Keeping Together in Time (1995)

Another quote →

Topics

History

More quotes by William H. McNeill

The principle obstacle to human dominion over the rain forests is still the rich variety of parasites lying in wait for intruders.

Plagues and Peoples (1976)

Categories of understanding along with everything else alter as societies change.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

Social science is itself part of the social experience it seeks to interpret and explain.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

I do not insist that I am right: I merely think so.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

Predictive social science does not exist. Indeed, it seems to me that it cannot ever exist, since the behaviour to be predicted reacts to and is partly shaped by the words used by the predictors.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

All William H. McNeill quotes →

You may also like

A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William H. McNeill (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.