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Historical experience shows that a crisis causes either a recovery or catastrophic consequences.

After a crisis we tell ourselves we understand why it happened and maintain the illusion that the world is understandable. In fact, we should accept the world is incomprehensible much of the time.

History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.

If you think about the actual problems we are facing - all the crises - we have the means to solve these crises. The past has shown us we are able to do things we never imagined we would be able to do.

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much.

Any historian worth their salt should be aware of wars, conflicts, catastrophes. They happen. This is part of the panorama.

History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time.

Crises are part of life. Everybody has to face them, and it doesn't make any difference what the crisis is.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

History keeps teaching us that we can't recognize the important events that are going to trigger changes.