Quotessence
Home / Authors / Geoffrey Blainey Books
Geoffrey Blainey

Geoffrey Blainey Books

Historian

Related Quotes

“Science and technology have a simple and persuasive message: the world's problems are soluble by ingenuity and material innovations; the world's riddles, such as the origins of the universe, can be unravelled by the scientific mind. But while science's achievements have been remarkable, they have not been revolutionary in probing human nature. In some ways the measurable problems analysed by science and technology are more easily dissected than human problems. The moon is more easily explored than the typical mind and heart.”

MindHeartScienceTechnologyHuman Nature
Book:A Short History of Christianity
Create image

“During their long period of unease about a hot Christmas, Australians rarely noticed that they had more access than their British relatives to a vital part of the traditional Christmas story: 'the stars in the bright sky'. Eventually they ceased to lament that their Christmas came in hot weather.”

StarsChristmasAustraliaAustralians
Book:Black Kettle and Full Moon : Daily Life in a Vanished Australia
Create image

“Ironically Britain claimed the whole continent simply in order to claim a few isolated harbours astride trade routes. It was like a speculator who, buying a huge wasteland flanking a highway because it had a few fine sites for road cafes and filling stations, found later that much of the land was fertile and productive.”

AustraliaGreat BritainAustralian History
Book:The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History
Create image

“Full-blooded democracy still remains a brave new experiment, the history of ancient Athens notwithstanding. It would be unwise to assume that its victory across the globe is inevitable, for democracy is not always a simple mode of governing. It is almost forgotten that one reason why in this century the world stood three times on the verge of chaos — during two world wars and one world depression — was that the leading democracies were almost as prone to accidents and blunders as were their authoritarian rivals.”

DemocracyGreat DepressionWorld Wars
Book:In Our Time: The Issues and The People of Our Century
Create image

“For eighty years convicts had been shipped to Australia, and a total of 163000 had set out on that voyage from which few returned. In the modern history of Europe there was rarely a planned deportation on a more ambitious scale until the era of Stalin and Hitler.”

AustraliaBritish EmpireDeportationAustralian History
Book:The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia
Create image

“For ages the Aborigines had relied heavily on isolation. It was their asset and their liability, and gave them long-term control of the continent. But if their isolation were to end, as it ultimately had to end with a shrinking world, their whole way of life could be fractured. Even the arrival of a few thousand permanent settlers, whether from Europe or Asia, would be like the first tremors of an earthquake.”

HistoryIsolationColonialismAboriginal CultureAboriginalsAboriginal AustraliansEuropean Expansion
Book:The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia
Create image