Gibson’s remark reminds me of Bergen Evans’s remark about how small is the circle of firelight that we call civilisation.
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“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.”
― Carter G. Woodson
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I didn’t expect quotes that necessarily reflected our own views, of course.
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On the flipside, elders have never been very good at listening to their children. And if they try to imitate them, everyone just thinks that they’re having a midlife crisis.
That’s not a quote, so I’m kind of off-topic but you can quote me on it, so maybe not. 
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“American history is longer, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” – James Baldwin
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“Leave it to me, I know how to deal with these people…”
Charles Lennox Richardson’s reported last words, before his death at the hands of samurai who, it turned out, didn’t respect the Stiff Upper Lip quite as much as they should have. Richardson’s death led directly to British involvement (read: profiteering) in the armament of Japan and ultimately, to the Pacific War, if you want to trace it far back enough: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namamugi_Incident
“[I felt] very honoured to be named Class A. It brought me unanticipated joy to learn that someone like me could be considered Class A. I felt as if I had been promoted.”
Lt. Gen. Sato Kenryo, shortly after being arrested as a Class A war criminal ahead of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
My knowledge of history is weirdly specific and somewhat lacking in inspirational quotes, but there is more than enough hubris and schadenfreude to go around…
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“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist-” – Union General John Sedgwick, who was shot to death before finishing the word “distance”
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Attributed to DaakSyde
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Heh. Most midlife crises involve an oversized motorized penis (motorcycle, sports car, boat, etc), ridiculous clothing, and a trophy girlfriend. They rarely involve becoming a socialist.
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From Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.
The last sentence is the money quote, but it’s better in context:
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“History obliterates every picture that it takes” – Hamilton
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"If some countries have too much history, we have too much geography,”
– William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s former Prime Minister
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“Therefore my doom is on you
Is on you and your kings;
Not for a fire in Ely fen
Not that your gods are nine or ten
But because it is only Christian men
Guard even heathen things”
[Chesterton - putting words into the mouth of King Aelfred arguing that Christianity would triumph over the Norse gods because of its preservation of culture, even alien culture. ]
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I used to know a director of the UK branch of a multinational, who was of surprisingly left wing views. We were having dinner one evening when apropos of nothing he suddenly remarked that he was very worried about his sales manager. It turned out he had bought a Harley-Davidson. “Do you happen to know if there’s any treatment for midlife crises? I can’t afford to have him go under a bus.”
So perhaps socialism is just the antidote.
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Well that broke the irony metre.
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Chesterton was pretty bonkers, in a careless Catholic anti-Semitic anti-Islamic Luddite kind of way. but his Catholic exceptionalism is awfully close to American exceptionalism.
My horse in the race is that (a) I have a Scandinavian IRL surname and (b) I live not far from the site of the Battle of Ethandune - assuming that Aelfred came off the Levels by the route that would have been usual in those days and passed by the monastery founded by Aldhelm in 685, his army would have passed less than a mile from my front door, passing a night in the Selwood on the way to what is now Edington. Of course none of this is certain but it’s an attractive story as it ends with a peace treaty between Gudrun and Aelfred and the emergence of Wessex as a major power. Sadly the White Horse in the area is a modern fake.
[edit - also see my own note above about not necessarily agreeing with the quotes I post. It was partly misunderstandings around this that led to my departure from the Andereplatz, so I’m sensitive on the subject, but I’m not going to stop posting stuff I think is relevant even if I happen to think it to be wrong.]
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“In the Spring and the Autumn are no righteous wars” - Kung Fu Tse.
The Spring and the Autumn is the title of the official history of China in the time of Kung.
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