The more recently power has originated, the less it can remain stationary - first because those who created it have become accustomed to rapid furthe…

- Jacob Burckhardt

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness...Permanence means paralysis and death. Only, in movement, with all its pain, is life.

- Jacob Burckhardt

History is on every occasion the record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another.

- Jacob Burckhardt

Great men are necessary for our life, in order that the movement of world history can free itself sporadically, by fits and starts, from obsolete way…

- Jacob Burckhardt

In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end …

- Jacob Burckhardt

Neither in the life of the individual nor in that of mankind is it desirable to know the future.

- Jacob Burckhardt

Only a fairy tale calls a constant condition 'happiness'.

- Jacob Burckhardt

Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it.

- Jacob Burckhardt

The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.

- Jacob Burckhardt