Those who think they are the future can’t tell you half as much about it as those who know they are the past.
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
Many modern ills trace to the fateful decision to teach stupid people how to read.
The nostalgia is not for poverty but for the social bonds that poverty demands and cements.
Journalism is the first draft of history, shortly to reside with all other first drafts.
The past also judges us, less indulgently than the future will.
Civilization is always under attack, always crumbling, always burning; it ends when we can no longer repel the invaders, shore up the foundations, and extinguish the flames.
History is lenient with the vicious and powerful victims of tyrants still more vicious and powerful.
Yesterday’s distant dream, today’s brilliant innovation, tomorrow’s basic human right.
It is simple to cheat an honest man; and one of the great themes of modern history is honest men getting cheated.
Discursive prose was a brief and happy interlude in human history: at the beginning were drums and chants, and so it shall be at the end.