Eric Hobsbawm

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. ”

It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans. ”

As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports. ”

Utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved. ”

There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities. ”