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Past Quotes

“A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write. The regard of the public is not to be kept but by tribute, and the remembrance of past service will quickly languish unless successive performances frequently revive it. Yet in every new attempt there is new hazard, and there are few who do not, at some unlucky time, injure their own characters by attempting to enlarge them.”

WritingCharacterPastSuccessfulDangerFamePerformancesRegardCeaseRemembranceAttemptingTributeHazardsReviveUnluckyLanguish
Book:The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
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“In the past, the British had signally failed to build an effective structure of royal authority and administration in their American colonies. As a result, no possibility existed of soothing and winning over influential and talented Americans, in the way that influential and talented Scotsmen were increasingly being won over, by giving them increased access to state employment.”

WayGivingStatesPastWinningResultsPossibilityAuthorityStructureBritishAccessEmploymentAdministrationRoyalInfluentialColonySoothingBritish HistoryScotsmen
Book:Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837
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“Like sex, poverty and power, suicide may always be with us. But like them again, the actual form is takes is essentially time-specific and culture-bound, not only in the past but in the present too. The people who took their lives, the paths which led them to that end, and the experience of dying in this way were deeply influenced by specific historical circumstances. Only by making a greater effort at historical understanding can this most secret house of death be made to yield up more of its confidences.”

PeopleWayMayMadeEndsPastFormCultureHouseSexUnderstandingEffortSecretPovertyPathGreaterDyingCircumstancesSuicideHistoricalBoundsYieldBritish History
Author:David Cannadine
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“Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries.”

WorldShouldHumansMayPhilosophyMightPastPoliticalStruggleDemocracyFourRightsCenturyTheoryStructureHuman RightsVainHumanistStemConstructsComfortingPolitical PhilosophyPrescriptionsCrudeHeirsSupremacyDeterminismPersonal FreedomTerritorialBourbonCredoMaritimePragmatistsBonaparte
Book:Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World
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“The common sense of the word (navy) as we use it today refers to a permanent fighting service made up of ships designed for war, manned by professionals and supported by an adminsistrative and technical infrastructure. A navy in this sense is only one possible method of making war at sea, and by some way the most difficult and the most recent. There have in the past been, and to some extent still are, many other ways of generating sea power.”

WayMadeStillsWarUseTodayPastFightingDifficultCommonSeaMethodCommon SenseShipsPermanentNavyInfrastructureSea Power
Author:Nicholas Rodger
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“In general, life is better than it has ever been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word : Dentistry.”

IfsThinkingAgeAblePastLife IsPleasureHistoryHumourLet MeGoldenPlentyTransportGolden AgeSingle WordDentistry
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“But before Derby go, would they mind telling the rest of the Premier League - the league which it has debased with its pathetically-inadequate presence for the past 12 months - where the money has gone? You know, the £30m or so in prize money that every team, even the one at the bottom of the table from August to May, automatically receives by being in the Premier League... So what happened to that money? Or put another way, why was such a meaningless fraction of it spent on recruiting new players? It's one thing not to compete; it's quite another not to even attempt to do so.”

KnowsWayMindMayPastGonePlayerHappenedOne ThingTeamFootballMonthsTablesBottomSoccerAnalysisLeaguePrizeMeaninglessAnother WayInadequateAugustFractionsPremier LeagueDerbyPrize Money
Author:Pete Gill
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“I've not had to ask permission from Geraldine to take the job. I'm one of the few men in this life who are not under the thumb. I'm stronger than that. Did she want me out of the house? Listen, she's wanted me out of the house for the past 27 years and has often asked me not to come back again. But I always show up, and really, she can't do without me, because I'm brilliant.”

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Author:Martin O'Neill
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“How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasturenothing but years of effort can extract it. You can't hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon.”

PeopleWayYearsPastFallProcessGrowthEffortStruggleFeetSubjectsVictoryRootsSightMathematicsTablesMathShouldersMathematicalHorizonPaceSquaresEquationsRippleArithmeticAlgebraTangledCalculusTheoremsMultiplicationStumpsSquare RootsHardwoodQuadraticsQuadratic Equation
Author:Stephen Leacock
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“We will have to choose not between color nor race nor religion nor between East and West either, but simply between being slaves and being free. And we will have to choose completely and for good; the time is already past now when we can choose a little of each, a little of both. We can choose a state of slavedom, and if we are powerful enough to be among the top two or three or ten, we can have a certain amount of license - until someone more powerful rises and has us machine-gunned against a cellar wall.”

IfsLittlesTwoStatesEnoughWisdomPastCertainThreePoliticsPowerfulRaceEconomyColorWallAmountTenMachinesSlaveWestEastLiberalismLicenseBeing FreeCellarsEast And West
Book:Essays, Speeches & Public Letters
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“There are many reasons why the general public doesn't really understand our monetary system. In the first place, money is something that people tend to get emotional about. After all, money involves, and always has involved, something closely akin to faith-which probably explains why in many past societies the money system has been in the hands of a priesthood, the subject of magical rites, and the ceremonial services of the tribe's medicine man.”

PeopleMenFirstsHas BeensReasonWisdomHandsPastPoliticsEconomySubjectsEmotionalInvolvedMedicineReason WhyLiberalismTribesMonetaryPriesthoodRiteGeneral PublicMonetary System
Author:Wright Patman
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“The Federal Reserve is the overlord of the money supply. If these two are not steering in the same direction, they can either neutralize each other or have the economy lurching in all directions. This is not a rational system for setting economic policy. It has given us trouble in the past, as the text will establish, and will inevitably in the future.”

IfsTwoPastPoliticsGivenEconomyTroubleEconomicPolicySettingRationalSettingsLiberalismReservesFederal ReserveEconomic PolicySteering
Author:Wright Patman
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“The Revolutionary's Utopia, which in appearance represents a complete break with the past, is always modeled on some image of the Lost Paradise, of a legendary Golden Age... All utopias are fed from the source of mythology; the social engineers' blueprints are merely revised editions of the ancient text.”

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Book:the god that failed
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“Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist.”

HumansDoeLightAgeTodayPastSocialReligiousViewsMoralStruggleWonderfulAtheismStrangeTheoryDevelopmentEvolutionConscienceVery GoodPhilosopherPoint Of ViewHopelessEthicalPessimistEccentricity
Author:Joseph McCabe
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“There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our Puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.”

TwoReasonAmericaPastFatherNationsReligiousViewsVisionMillionsAtheismDiversityEnlightenmentRootsConstitutionDespiteAppealsLegacyUncomfortableConformityAdoreFoundingHostileAutonomySuspiciousCoercionAllegianceOur Founding FathersPuritanHarshnessUnfriendlyContemptuous
Author:Sherwin Wine
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