Quotes from Eric J. Hobsbawm

It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that makes the 'invention of tradition' so interesting for historians of the past two centuries.

We need not trouble about the Dutch and Scandinavians who, though belonging broadly to the non-absolutist zone, lived a relatively tranquil life outside the dramatic events of the rest of Europe.

Talvez valha a pena lembrar que nesse período a ameaça às instituições liberais vinha apenas da direita política, já que entre 1945 e 1989 se supôs, quase como coisa indiscutível, que vinha essencialmente do comunismo.

Invented tradition' is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.

The difference between 'tradition' and 'custom' in our sense is indeed well illustrated here. 'Custom' is what judges do; 'tradition' (in this instance invented tradition) is the wig, robe and other formal paraphernalia and ritualized practices surrounding their substantial action.

Memory is life. It is always carried by groups of living people, and therefore it is in permanent evolution.

As one would expect of tourists, they tried to find poverty colourful

The greatest cruelties of our century have been the impersonal cruelties of remote decision, of system and routine, especially when they could be justified as regrettable operational necessity.

Denied a Lenin and deprived of Napoleon, France retreated into the last and, we must hope, indestructible redoubt, the world of Astérix . The postwar vogue for Parisian thinkers barely concealed their collective retreat into Hexagonal introversion and into the ultimate fortress of French intellectuality, Cartesian theory and puns.

Like Machiavelli himself, he [Edward Luttwak] enjoys truth not only because it is true but also because it shocks the naive

Indeed, it may be suggested that 'traditions' and pragmatic conventions or routines are inversely related.

Even the austere philosopher Immanuel Kant of Koenigsberg, it is said, whose habits were so regular that the citizens of that town set their watches by him, postponed the hour of his afternoon stroll when he received the news, thus convincing Koenigsberg that a world-shaking event had indeed happened.

La distruzione del passato, o meglio la distruzione dei meccanismi sociali che connettono l'esperienza dei contemporanei a quella delle generazioni precedenti, è uno dei fenomeni più tipici e insieme più strani degli ultimi anni del Novecento. La maggior parte dei giovani alla fine del secolo è cresciuta in una sorta di presente permanente, nel quale manca ogni rapporto organico con il passato storico del tempo in cui essi vivono.