πολυΐστωρ

... Isolated, each [historian] will understand only by halves, even within his own field of study, for the only true history, which can advance only through mutual aid, is universal history.

... Understanding, in all honesty, is a word pregnant with difficulties, but also with hope.

... In a word, a historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time. This is true of ever evolutionary stage, our own and all others. As the old Arab proverb has it: 'Men resemble their times more than they do their fathers'.

... In contrast, historical time is a concrete and living reality with an irreversible onward rush. It is the very plasma in which events are immersed, and the field within which they become intelligible.

... The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies. The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines. But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction.

... Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

... The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men.

... A man can lead a reasonably full life without a family, a fixed local residence, or a religious affiliation, but if he is stateless he is nothing. He has no rights, no security, and little opportunity for a useful career.

Marc Bloch - The Historian's Craft (Apologie pour l'histoire ou Métier d'historien) 1949

“Look again at the standard Mercator map and you see that Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, and yet Africa is actually fourteen times the size of Greenland! You could fit the USA, Greenland, India, China, Spain, France, Germany and the UK into Africa and still have room for most of Eastern Europe. We know Africa is a massive land mass, but the maps rarely tell us how massive.”

“When we are reaching for the stars, the challenges ahead are such that we will perhaps have to come together to meet them: to travel the universe not as Russians, Americans, or Chinese but as representatives of humanity. But so far, although we have broken free from the shackles of gravity, we are still imprisoned in our own minds, confined by our suspicion of the "other," and thus our primal competition for resources. There is a long way to go.”

“Technology may seem to overcome the distances between us in both mental and physical space, but it is easy to forget that the land where we live, work and raise our children is hugely important, and that the choices of those who lead the seven billion inhabitants of this planet will to some degree always be shaped by the rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes and seas that constrain us all – as they always have.”

“The colonial powers drew artificial borders on paper, completely ignoring the physical realities of the region. Violent attempts are now being made to redraw them; these will continue for several years, after which the map of nation states will no longer look as it does now.”

Tim Marshall ―  Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics (2015)