Fernand Braudel Quotes

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

Fernand Braudel

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

Fernand Braudel

#3. The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization.

Fernand Braudel

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

Fernand Braudel

#5. Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves very little trace in history.

Fernand Braudel

#6. Civilization is in fact the longest story of all. Civilization can persist through a series of economies.

Fernand Braudel

#7. 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

#8. 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

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

Fernand Braudel

#10. 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

#11. 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

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

Fernand Braudel

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

Fernand Braudel