Jacob Burckhardt > Quotes

“Nothing in the world is better suited to laziness than orthodoxy. If you gag your mouth, stop up your ears and put a blinder over your eyes, you can sleep peacefully.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“It is the historian’s function, not to make us clever for the next time, but to make us wise forever.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“The fates of people and of states, of entire civilizations, can depend on whether an extraordinary person can bring forth the proper strength of soul and action. Normal minds and spirits, no matter how numerous, cannot replace such a person.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“Thus what the word Renaissance really means is new birth to liberty—the spirit of mankind recovering consciousness and the power of self-determination, recognizing the beauty of the outer world and of the body through art, liberating the reason in science and the conscience in religion, restoring culture to the intelligence, and establishing the principle of political freedom.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The History of the Renaissance

“The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“The exercise of liberty requires moral and intellectual virtues that oppose those habits fostered by the reigning economic, social, and cultural elites. The virtue most essential to liberty is self-control, yet the ruling principle behind egalitarianism, Hollywood-style hedonism, and unbridled materialism is the notion that one’s appetites for pleasure and possessions should brook no limits.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“Between the two lay a multitude of political units—republics and despots—in part of long standing, in part of recent origin, whose existence was founded simply on their power to maintain it.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

“A valuable possession of a people is its first heroic epic.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“<>.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“Weder Seele noch Gehirn der Menschen haben in historischen Zeiten erweislich zugenommen, die Fähigkeiten jedenfalls waren längst komplett! Daher ist unsere Präsumption, im Zeitalter des sittlichen Fortschritts zu leben, höchst lächerlich”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (Großdruck)

“Long voluntary subjection under individual Caesar and usurpers is in prospect. People no longer believe in principles, but will, periodically, probably believe in saviors.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“most honourable alliance which he could form was with intellectual merit, without regard to its origin. The liberality of the northern princes of the thirteenth century was confined to the knights, to the nobility which served and sang. It was otherwise with the Italian despot. With his thirst for fame and his passion for monumental works, it was talent, not birth, which he needed. In the company of the poet and the scholar he felt himself in a new position, almost, indeed, in possession of a new legitimacy.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

“By taking this stand, Burckhardt emerged in most refreshing contrast with his contemporaries and many of his successors. For what he developed was nothing short of a psychology of historiography. The historian is to observe, contemplate, and enjoy the incredibly glorious richness of the human experience. He is to look for human greatness and creativity everywhere, even in periods that might seem alien and distant from him.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“هر دوره ی فرهنگی که به صورت واحدی کامل نمایان می شود تنها از طریق زندگی سیاسی و دین و هنر و علم به زبان نمی آید بلکه مهر خود را بر زندگی اجتماعی نیز می زند.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 1

“It is a degeneration, it is philosophic and bureaucratic arrogance, for the state to attempt to fulfill moral purposes directly, for only society can do that.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“a multitude destitute of will and of the means of resistance, but profitable in the utmost degree to the exchequer.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

“El auténtico descubridor. No obstante, no es el hombre que, el primero, tiene la suerte de tropezarse con alguna cosa, sino el hombre que encuentra lo que iba buscando.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 1

“The polis was a higher product of Nature; it had come into being to make life possible, but continued to exist in order that life might be lived properly, happily, nobly, and, as far as might be, in accordance with the standard of excellence.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“نخستین بار رنسانس کوشید به زندگی سر و سامانی ببخشد و زندگی خانوادگی را همچون اثر هنری منظم سازد. اقتصاد شکوفا و خانه سازی به شیوه ی عاقلانه، برای وصول بدین هدف موثر واقع شد. ولی عامل اصلی، تفکر خردمندانه درباره ی همه ی مسائل مربوط به روابط اجتماعی و تربیت و سازمان دادن خانه و خانواده بود.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 1

“« Aucun ouvrage de référence au monde, avec ses citations, ne peut remplacer le lien organique qu'une affirmation trouvée par nous-même établit avec notre intuition et notre attention, si bien qu'il se forme une véritable richesse pour notre esprit. »”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“every generation is equidistant from God.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

“آسانی آموزش زبان لاتینی برای ایتالیاییان، و فراوانی بقایای آثار هنری دوران باستان در آن کشور، راه را برای گرایش مردم ایتالیا به فرهنگ کلاسیک هموار ساخت؛ و چند عامل دیگر مانند سیرت قومی که با گذشت زمان دگرگون شده بود، و نهادهای سیاسی که لومباردها از آلمان وارد کرده بودند، و کلیسا، با آن گرایش به هم آمیختند و‌ روح مدرن ایتالیایی را که مقدر بود سرمشق و آرمان تمامی دنیای باختر زمین باشد، به دست آوردند.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisaion of The Renaissance In Italy 1928 [Leather Bound]

“Nema herojskog doba- postoje samo herojski ljudi.”
― Jacob Burckhardt

“El auténtico descubridor. No obstante, no es el hombre que, tiene la suerte de tropezarse con alguna cosa, sino el hombre que encuentra lo que iba buscando.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien.

“هر دوره ی فرهنگی که به صورت واحدی کامل نمایان می شود تنها از طریق زندگی سیاسی و دین و هنر و علم به زبان نمی آید بلکه مهر خود را بر زندگی اجتماعی نیز می زند.”
― Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

“Quyền lực tự nó đã là xấu, ai sử dụng không quan trọng. Quyền lực có thể làm băng hoại người cầm quyền và dẫn đến sự lạm dụng. Không chỉ những ông vua và những nhà quý tộc nắm quyền tuyệt đối, mà quần chúng, khi chế độ dân chủ trao vào tay họ quyền lực tối cao của chính phủ, cũng rất dễ có xu hướng thái quá.”
― Jacob Burckhardt