Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

The historical method has revolutionized Political Economy, not by showing its laws to be false, but by proving that they are relative for the most part to a particular stage of civilization. This destroys their character as eternal laws, and strips them of much of their force and all their sanctity. In this way the historical method has rescued us from intellectual superstitions.

The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation.

Very long ago our ancestors had moral systems. Our current institutions are only a couple of thousand years old, which is really not old in the eyes of a biologist.

I'm interested in Scotland now and then, how it's changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?

Nothing in our evolutionary history specifically prepared us to live in large societies. Almost everything about the way culture works does.

Well, right now, I'm very fascinated with 1920s Berlin. I mean, probably the more interesting thing would be to go to the beginning of civilization or precivilization - like polytheistic times. It would be interesting to see what came before modern religion and culture - what circumstances created the environment or the need for it.

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

I don't think theatre has changed; it's society that has changed.

It is the recognition of history as a record of human experience which has inevitably resulted in the inclusion of this conquest of civilization within the framework of a complete human history.

You have to look at history as an evolution of society.

But the development of human society does not go straight forward; and the epic process will therefore be a recurring process, the series a recurring series - though not in exact repetition.

The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.

From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment.

If we compare the present time with former ages, we find that the same tendencies and desires have at all times governed states and peoples.

When I contemplate the immense advances in sciences and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches

It is common to think of our own time as standing on the apex of human history.

The general idea of history seems to be that it is the biography of a society…. History is to the common life of many what biography is to an individual.

What 'Deadwood' did was to talk about how capitalism started, how civilised society came in, and how that brought its own problems.

The philosophy of individualism owes a great deal to the tradition of novel-writing and novel-reading. In its development and in its aesthetics, the novel is not politically neutral; it has been a participant in history all along.

The longer a region is in contact with modern civilization, the higher the degree to which the society in the region is civilized.

History informs where we are and how we got here.

↑ top up position down The fact that I suspect I'm an asshole means I probably am not, because a real asshole doesn't think he's an asshole, does he? Therefore, by realizing that I'm an asshole, I am in fact negating that very realization, am I not? Descartes's Asshole Axiom: I think I am; therefor I'm not one.

Historically - when you look at how America has evolved, typically we make progress on race relations in fits and starts. We make some progress, and then there's maybe some slippage.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.