James Henry Breasted

“The discovery of the past is the promise of the future.”

“The Fertile Crescent, the shores of the desert bay.”

“The emergence of character is the greatest fact in the story of the universe.”

“A new past has begun to unfold before us, a past of which we had little more than a hint before.”

“The modern world has been powerfully, and in the main, beneficially, influenced by the civilization of the ancient Orient.”

“The conscience of man was born in the valley of the Nile.”

“Character, not wealth, power, or position, is the supreme good.”

“The day of the old classical exclusiveness is gone forever.”

“The rise of man from savagery to civilization was a chapter in the history of the ancient Orient.”

“This new-found world of the early East is a new-found field of science.”

“The Oriental Institute is a research laboratory for the investigation of the early human career.”

“It is a situation which has now become a great historic movement, a new crusade.”

“For the first time the historian is able to look back over a period of some five thousand years of developing civilization.”