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

“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

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

“...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