Fernand Braudel quotes

History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all. (Fernand Braudel)
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. View quote
Fernand Braudel
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. View quote
Fernand Braudel
Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves little trace in history. View quote
Fernand Braudel
All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present. View quote
Fernand Braudel
Leadership of a world-economy is an experience of power which may blind the victor to the march of history. View quote
Fernand Braudel
The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization. View quote
Fernand Braudel
There are always some areas world history does not reach, zones of silence and undisturbed ignorance. View quote
Fernand Braudel
Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time. View quote
Fernand Braudel
The earth is, like our own skin, fated to carry the scars of ancient wounds. View quote
Fernand Braudel
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)
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. View quote
Fernand Braudel
India survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors' opulence. (...) The Muslims (...) could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves. View quote
Fernand Braudel