And if it is really true that it is divinely ordained that there should be wars among men, then what we should do is to be as slow as we can to start a war and as quick as we can to end it, once it has begun.

Xenophon(Ksenofanes, n. 430 - n. 354 eaa): A History of My Times(i. p., 1. painos 1966; Hellenica, n. 355 eaa), sivu 319.

For Ammianus the late empire was not in the process of declining but in that of maturing. In fact "declining into old age, and often owing victory to its name alone, Rome has come to a quieter period of life." He did not, however, pursue that quasi-organic analogy to its logical conclusion, the eventual death of the empire; such a conclusion may have been unthinkable even for Ammianus. Or he may not have reached that conclusion because he, like so many ancient historians, did not ascribe the problems of states to structural changes but only to individual persons who failed.

Ernest Breisach(1923-2016): Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, & Modern. Third Edition(2007, 1. versio 1983), sivu 74.

Yet the bulk of the liberals reflected their own social origin. And liberalism meant to them the rejection not only of absolutism but of democracy... The rule of the masses, they warned, meant the destruction of European civilization as it had been known. Although liberalism stood for the free exchange of ideas and the rule of law, it also justified police methods that curbed the subversive movement and ideas that threatened the liberal status quo. The vote was to be restricted to the propertied and cultured classes...

Georg G. Iggers(1926-2017), Q. Edward Wang(1958-) & Supriya Mukherjee: A Global History of Modern Historiography(2008), sivu 78.