It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

We are not merely passive pawns of historical forces nor are we victims of the past. We can shape and direct history.

Humanity has experienced many revolutionary changes over the course of history: revolutions in agriculture in science industrial production as well as numerous political revolutions. But these have all been limited to the external aspects of our individual and collective lives.

Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.

Cause and effect the riddle of all history is a particular devil in financial history and never more so than today where entire classes of security are collapsing not on public exchanges and stock-tickers but because there are no markets to establish prices this side of nothing.

Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637 the Banque Royale of 1719-20 the railway speculation of the 1840s the great crash of 1929.

One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents letters diaries grainy video weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.

If good history is dispassionate history it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.

The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages was not suddenly abolished in modern times.

The history of Christianity therefore must be of concern to all who are interested in the record of man and particularly to all who seek to understand the contemporary human scene.