“I am a historian who believes in long continuities and delights in tracing them.”

Author’s Prologue to Paul Johnson A History of the Jews

“The wise, I say, may take advice from fools.”

Pandar to Troilus in Geoffrey Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde

“Marge: Sweetie, you could still go to McGill. The Harvard of Canada./ Lisa: Anything that's the Something of the Something isn't really the Anything of Anything”

The Simpsons “MoneyBART” episode, according to www.simpsonseh.com, a website about the Simpsons and Canada (the setup is that Lisa is worried that she’s not doing enough extracurricular stuff to get into an Ivy League university).

“The influence which writers of history thus exercise on public opinion is probably more immediate and extensive than that of political theorists who launch new ideas.”

Friedrich Hayek, quoted in appendix to R.M. Hartwell, “The Unfinished Agenda: Some Reflections on Completing the History of the Mont Pelerin Society”, September 1992

“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”

Albert Einstein, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go

“brilliant, but not correct.”

Quoted in Horace Porter Campaigning with Grant as “what Cuvier said of the French Academy’s definition of a crab”.