Thursday, October 28, 2010

May not historians ask, however, why it should be their task to spend long years disproving ideas thought up by sociologists in their baths? Do historians want to be the empirical foot soldiers commanded about by a bunch of sociological colonels?
- Peter Baldwin in Comparison and History

Friday, October 22, 2010

Each of the planet's cultures is a unique answer to the question of what it means to be human.
- Wade Davis

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Hurrah for the law of Supply and Demand,
That regulates everything in the land,
The rate of wages, the price of stocks,
And the size of the Vanderbilt pile of "rocks."

It keeps in subjection the dull Labor hordes,
It fills up the chests of our great money lords,
And when for just reasons they're brought to a stand,
They've only to answer, "Supply and Demand."

- John McCormick

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.
- Charles Schwab

Monday, October 18, 2010

Yonder he goes, with steady tread,
Toiling for his daily bread,
While the city is hushed,
Sleeves unrolled and cheeks health-flushed;
O! the strong mechanic!
The sinewy-armed mechanic!

- Mary A. Denison

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The point of new historical investigation is to disrupt the notion of fixity, to discover the nature of the debate or repression that leads to the appearance of timeless permanence in binary gender representation.
- from "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" by Joan Scott in American Historical Review