Patrick J. Geary

 (born September 26, 1948) is an American medieval historian and Professor of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Quotes

 * Modern history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness.
 * The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2003), Princeton University Press, p. 15.


 * The peoples of Europe are a work in progress and always must be... The history of the people of Europe has not ended -- it never will. Ethnogenesis is a process of the present and future as much as it is the past. No efforts of romantics, politicians, or social scientists can preserve once and for all some essential soul of a people or nation. Nor can any effort ensure that nations, ethnic groups, and communities of today will not vanish utterly in the future. The past may have set the parameters within which one can build the future, but it cannot determine what that future must be.
 * The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2003), Princeton University Press, p. 157.