Eric Hobsbawm

"Technology does not determine society; society determines how technology is used."

"The nation is a recent invention masquerading as ancient."

"Crises reveal truths that stable times conceal."

"The working class is not inherently revolutionary; it becomes so through circumstances."

"Cultural forms are not timeless essences but historical creations."

"The historian's job is to explain not to judge, though judgment is inevitable."

"Democracy requires not just institutions but a culture of participation."

"The past speaks to us only if we learn to listen carefully."

"Modernization is not Westernization, though the West often confuses them."

"The best revolution would be one that made itself unnecessary."

"Language shapes thought, but it does not imprison it."

"The collapse of the Soviet system was not inevitable, though its failures were."

"Patriotism without self-criticism is merely propaganda."

"The appetite for historical knowledge reflects an appetite for understanding ourselves."

"Success belongs to the side that understands its own moment in history."

"Economic relationships are ultimately relationships of power."

"The future is not written; it must be made through struggle and choice."

"Intellectuals have a duty to speak truth to power, even when powerless."

"Art reflects the social conditions of its creation, though not simplistically."

"The acceleration of history creates anxiety that technology cannot ease."

"Mass society requires mass movements; isolated individuals change nothing."

"The greatest revolutions create conditions unintended by their makers."

"Memory is not storage but construction, shaped by present needs."

"The decline of certainty is perhaps the only certain mark of modernity."

"Inequality is not natural; it is maintained through deliberate structures."

"The nation-state will probably survive because we have invented nothing better."

"History teaches us that the future is always uncertain and often surprising."

"Class remains fundamental to understanding society, though it cannot explain everything."

"The intellectual must maintain independence while remaining engaged."

"Tradition is invented not to preserve the past but to control the present."