Iain Overton > Quotes

“What is clearer is that suicide attacks, and our responses to them, have been central to the formation of the modern age. They helped create the conditions that caused the Russian Revolution; they were in the forefront of the minds of men who created a nuclear epoch and, unwittingly, the Cold War that followed; they were there at the beginning of the War on Terror that still dominates our headlines and they have helped drag the Middle East into the quagmire that it is today. In so doing, they have fuelled fears about migrants and refugees the world over, they have challenged the UN to its very core, and they have fed off conspiracy theories, post-truth propaganda and a view that the world is witnessing a millenarian clash of civilliations that heralds the end of days.”
― Iain Overton, The Price of Paradise

“These buildings and these books, these expats and their expectations, all had an impact. The influence of France turned the theories of the French Enlightenment into something more than just ideas in Russia - they became physical. They became revolution. And at the heart of that revolution lay philosophies about the freedom of the individual, one where the imperial shackles of social, political and religious dogma were seen clearly and where the call for them to be shaken off was heard loudly.”
― Iain Overton, The Price of Paradise