Judgments on History and Historians Quotes

“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 may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“The exercise of liberty requires moral and intellectual virtues that oppose those habits fostered by the reigning economic, social, and cultural elites. The virtue most essential to liberty is self-control, yet the ruling principle behind egalitarianism, Hollywood-style hedonism, and unbridled materialism is the notion that one’s appetites for pleasure and possessions should brook no limits.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“A valuable possession of a people is its first heroic epic.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“By taking this stand, Burckhardt emerged in most refreshing contrast with his contemporaries and many of his successors. For what he developed was nothing short of a psychology of historiography. The historian is to observe, contemplate, and enjoy the incredibly glorious richness of the human experience. He is to look for human greatness and creativity everywhere, even in periods that might seem alien and distant from him.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“every generation is equidistant from God.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians