Understanding History Quotes

“This argument, expressed in Latin—which is held to make any nonsense respectable—has been erected by the Catholic Church into a first principle: that we cannot err in believing what has been believed always, everywhere, and by everybody. Those who use this argument conveniently forget how many once universal beliefs are now discarded.”
― Bertrand Russell, Understanding History: And Other Essays

“Any organization, however idealistic its professed aims, may degenerate into a tyranny unless the public firmly retains in its own hands some effective means of controlling leaders. Democracy is the only means so far discovered, but it will not be a completely effective means until it has been broadened and extended to economic regions from which as yet it is excluded. The essential data on this whole subject can only be obtained from a study of history.”
― Bertrand Russell, Understanding History: And Other Essays

“while some aspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it is important to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complex to be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centuries to come.”
― Bertrand Russell, Understanding History: And Other Essays

“But history is perhaps an even better antidote to anarchic individualism as well as to a lifeless traditionalism”
― Bertrand Russell, Understanding History: And Other Essays

“We cannot admire a social system which allows no scope for individual achievement, and we cannot approve one in which excessive individualism makes the social system unstable.”
― Bertrand Russell, Understanding History: And Other Essays

“But in fact, while some aspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it is important to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complex to be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centuries to come.”
― Bertrand Russell, Understanding History: And Other Essays

“A few societies have perished from”
― Bertrand Russell, Understanding History: And Other Essays