Triumphalism Quotes

“What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?'

'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly.

'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ...

'Finn?'

'"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange)”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Jiang whistled. 'Well, that's not a prison.'
'It's worse,' Rin said. 'That's a church.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“In much of urban and Western civilization today, with no proper tragic sense of life, we try to believe that it is all upward and onward--and by ourselves. It works for so few, and it cannot serve us well in the long run--because it is not true. It is an inherently win-lose game, and more and more people find themselves on the losing side.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“...good words - that triumphalism of positivity- but life will claw and eat you - chew you over and over - if you carry such a small knife ...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“Neo-conservatism in all its pomp conceived - in the Project for a New American Century - that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world could be remade in the American image, that the previous bipolar world could be replaced by a unipolar one in which the U.S. was the dominant arbiter of global and regional affairs.”
― Martin Jacques