Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with resp...
Every town has ‘THAT house’: the one that once held dark secrets. You know the house… the one no one will purchase? The one whose walls have seen blood? The one that even birds avoid, and the darkened windows resemble empty eye sockets? There a...
When I started researching airline stewardesses, I found that the topic made for amusing cocktail party banter. “You’re writing a book about that? Wow, what fun!” Yes, it was fun, but it was also serious history. Pretty women do not fit into wh...
I am not suggesting that history or scepticism by themselves can provide all the answers to all these questions. History, after all, is not a forward-looking discipline. It can only tell us what happened the last time, not what will happen next time....
Study history, Alleluia. In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a...
Speaking of high-end shoe designers, in 2011 it was fascinating to see the design company of Christian Louboutin try to stop the company Yves Saint Laurent from producing high heels with red soles, claiming that Louboutin was the originator of the re...
I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience... War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does no...
Identity is the history that has gone into bone and blood and reshaped the flesh. Identity is not what we were but what we have become what we are at this moment.
Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.
To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.
Whenever a woman strengthens the faith of a child, she contributes to the strength of a family - now and in the future.
Truth is not as pompous and romantic as myth ... but it has the immeasurable value of being the Truth.
Is numerical equality (forced by the use of specific physical units) the same as conceptual equality? Of course NOT!
The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.
You are not your virginity. You are a human being. The state of your hymen has nothing to do with your worth.
Suicide isn't something people do to hurt other people. It's something people do to release themselves from pain.
Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.
Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.
Julian recognized that the strength of the orthodox Church rested to a great extent on the imperial discrimination in its favour. According to Ammianus, he tried to atomize the Church by ending the system:
He [Augustine] admitted: 'I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress by writing.'
It is then he realises that certain things loom larger than forgiveness and reconciliation: memory, for one, and history, bloody history.
