“My principles require me merely to invite you to agree, while expecting the contrary. Missionaries do not make converts with such a message: millions are not mobilized by such tepid phrases. That is why the merely intellectual compulsion to regard human diversity and flux is unlikely to prevail against simpler systems of misunderstanding truly capable of altering the world in which we live.”

— William H. McNeill

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

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William H. McNeill 43

Canadian historian 1917–2016

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