“In 1867, Matthew Arnold heard the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ of the Sea of Faith.”
Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character
In my latest piece for NP Platformed (subscription only, so please get one if you haven’t already) I deplore the tendency of courts to uphold breaches of our rights on sociological not legal grounds.
“The lack of the fabulous may make my work dull. But I shall be satisfied if it be thought useful by those who wish to know the exact character of events now past, which, human nature being what it is, will recur in similar or analogous form.”
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars, cited by Robert L. Formaini in Foreword to Garet Garrett and Murray N. Rothbard, The Great Depression and New Deal Monetary Policy
“‘History, Paul Valery once wrote, ‘is the science of what never happens twice...’“
George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs
“It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions. The same events always follow from the same causes.”
David Hume, quoted in Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.”
Ralph Ellison Invisible Man
“For everywhere, above and below, you will find nothing but the selfsame things; they fill the pages of all history, ancient, modern, and contemporary; and they fill our cities and homes today. There is no such thing as novelty; all is as trite as it is transitory.”
Marcus Aurelius Meditations VII.1
“If you cannot prevent your enemies from swallowing you whole, at least you must do what you can to prevent them from digesting you.”
“Rousseau’s famous charge to the Poles” quoted by George Weigel in Witness to Hope (saying that in World War II it “was tested as never before.”)