SaturdayJan 24, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Human history becomes more a race between education and catastrophe.
Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions, great or small.
In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.
The past is but the past of a beginning.
Rest enough for the individual man, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet and all its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last, out across immensities to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deep space, and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.
His studies were pursued but never effectually overtaken.
After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true.
Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found god and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end.
The past is but the beginning of a beginning.
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
Go away. I'm all right.
From the point of view of human history, the way in which the Thirteen States became independent is of far less importance than the fact that they did become independent. And with the establishment of their independence came a new sort of community into the world. It was like something coming out of an egg. It was a western European civilization that had broken free from the last traces of Empire and Christendom; it had not a vestige of monarchy left and no state religion.... It was in these respects such a clean start in political organization as the world had not seen before.... The new community had in fact gone right down to the bare and stripped fundamentals of human association, and it was building up a new sort of society and a new sort of state upon those foundations.
Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas.
The paths of social advancement are strewn with shattered friendships.
Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.
Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.
History has been kinder to Churchill than many of his contemporaries ever were. Some may be surprised to learn that the following luminary from the field of science-fiction had anything political to say at all: 'Winston Churchill, the present would-be British Fuehrer, is a person with a range of ideas limited to the adventures and opportunities of British political life. He has never given evidence of thinking extensively, or of any scientific or literary capacity.... His ideology, picked up in the garrison life of India, on the reefs of South Africa, the maternal home and the conversation of wealthy Conservative households, is a pitiful jumble of incoherent nonsense. A boy scout is better equipped. He has served his purpose and it is high time he retired upon his laurels before we forget the debt we owe him....'
New and stirring things are belittled, because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question arises, 'Why then, are you not taking part in them?'
What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?
The Shape of Things to Come.
Of the British officer: He muffs his real job without a blush, and yet he would rather be shot than do his bootlaces up crisscross.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
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