Fernand Braudel

“Social science is a single science. What is called sociology, what is called history, are two faces of the same coin.”

“Capitalism only triumphs when it becomes identified with the state, when it is the state.”

“Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties... we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life.”

“The world economy is the greatest of all structures.”

“The Mediterranean is a complex of seas, but it is also a complex of lands.”

“Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion.”

“Structures are the realities which endure, which are transmitted over long periods of time and which are slow to change.”

“Let us therefore be convinced that there is no unilateral history.”

“In the long run, the most abstract, the most 'useless' research is the most useful of all.”

“The longue durée is a structure which lies beneath the surface of the past, a framework which has a powerful and often secret influence on the course of events.”

“A civilization is a space, a 'cultural area', a collection of cultural characteristics and phenomena.”

“All history is the history of the present.”

“For the historian, everything begins and ends with time.”

“History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears to stand still.”

“The everyday is the most persistent of histories.”