"Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature..." — Johan Huizinga

History creates comprehensibility primarily by arranging facts meaningfully and only in a very limited sense by establishing strict causal connections.

Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science.

The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.