Tag: history,

Quote from Kingsley Amis, Jake’s Thing

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

Quote from Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

It is truth, in the old saying, that is ‘the daughter of time,’ and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that ‘history’ had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election.

Quote from Sheri S. Tepper, King’s Blood Four

I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, “The Gods say…” They will believe if one says, “I had a Vision…” They will believe if one says, “It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold…” But, if one says, “History teaches,” then they will not believe.