“What was novel in Voegelin’s thought was that he wedded that commonplace to a theory of history, suggesting that a universal process of symbolization was surreptitiously at work in human civilization, giving world history a discernible direction.”

“Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances”

“A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.”

“Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.”

“The history of mathematics is important also as a valuable contribution to the history of civilization. Human progress is closely identified with scientific thought. Mathematical and physical researches are a reliable record of intellectual progress.”

“Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds.”

“During that period von Bertalanffy as a young scholar was not only interested in biology and philosophy of science. He was also interested in history and generally in humanities. He studied Oswald Spengler's theory of history and has written a paper on this topic. His interest in Spengler's theory of history anticipated von Bertalanffy's lifelong attempts to reconcile sciences with humanities.”

“Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.”

“Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.”

“Just a couple of decades ago, a course in the history of Western civilisation was commonplace. Today, it is so disreputable that you can’t pay universities to do it.”