In all your life, only a few moments matter. Mostly you never get a good look at them except in hindsight, long after they’ve zipped past you: the moment when you decided whether to talk to that girl, slow down on that blind bend, stop and
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“When I succeed everyone will applaud my efforts.” For anyone else, these might have been famous last words. For Lafayette, they were his opening lines.”
― Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution
― Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution
“The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.”
― The Lessons of History
― The Lessons of History
“History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing. The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.”
― The Lessons of History
― The Lessons of History
“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.”
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“In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”
― The Lessons of History
― The Lessons of History
Overdue Podcast
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A group for reading along and discussing the books featured on the Overdue Podcast. Overdue is a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. ...more
SengMing’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at SengMing’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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