"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
"In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendour and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details. But in history the matter is far otherwise. Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws."
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Source: On History. The Independent Review 3, pp. 207-215, users.drew.edu. July 1904.
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