Fernand Braudel Quotes

• All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

  Fernand Braudel

  History, Ifs

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• History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all.

  Fernand Braudel

  Moving, Three, Movement

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• Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.

  Fernand Braudel

  Firefly, Dark, Light

  Fernand Braudel (1995). “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II”, p.901, Univ of California Press

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• Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves little trace in history.

  Fernand Braudel

  Happiness, Littles, Private Life

  "Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce".

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• The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization.

  Fernand Braudel

  Food, Civilization, Smell

  Fernand Braudel (1992). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The structure of everyday life”, p.64, Univ of California Press

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• Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life.

  Fernand Braudel

  Inspirational, Motivational, History

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “On History”, p.16, University of Chicago Press

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• There are always some areas world history does not reach, zones of silence and undisturbed ignorance.

  Fernand Braudel

  Ignorance, History, Silence

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The perspective of the world”, p.18, Univ of California Press

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• The earth is, like our own skin, fated to carry the scars of ancient wounds.

  Fernand Braudel

  Skins, World, Earth

  Fernand Braudel (1990). “The Identity of France: History and environment”, Harpercollins

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• Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time.

  Fernand Braudel

  Events, Reason, Social

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• Leadership of a world-economy is an experience of power which may blind the victor to the march of history.

  Fernand Braudel

  Leadership, World, May

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The perspective of the world”, p.132, Univ of California Press

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• There were two, three or four French Revolutions. Like a multi-stage rocket today, the Revolution involved several successive explosions and propellant thrusts.

  Fernand Braudel

  Two, Three, Four

  Fernand Braudel (1994). “A History of Civilizations: 2”, Allen Lane

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• For the historian everything begins and ends with time, a mathematical, godlike
  time, a notion easily mocked, time external to men, 'exogenous,' as economists
  would say, pushing men, forcing them, and painting their own individual times
  the same color: it is, indeed, the imperious time of the world.

  Fernand Braudel

  Time, Men, Color

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “On History”, p.48, University of Chicago Press

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• The companies only developed if the state did not intervene in the French fashion. If on the contrary a certain degree of economic freedom was the rule, capitalism moved in firmly and adapted itself to all administrative quirks and difficulties

  Fernand Braudel

  Fashion, Degrees, Economics

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce”, p.446, Univ of California Press

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• The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society?... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time?

  Fernand Braudel

  Cutting, Past, Keys

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce”, p.248, Univ of California Press

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• For a century, the Arabs tribes gave Islam the first of these victories. Then the rough mountain peoples of North Africa, the Berbers, helped it to conquer Spain and organize Fatimid Egypt.

  Fernand Braudel

  Egypt, Victory, Islam

  Fernand Braudel (1995). “A History of Civilizations”, Penguin Group USA

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