Steve Greenleaf

“There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“ATruly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne

“appalled by nationalism, they disavowed national history, as nationalism’s handmaiden. But when scholars stopped writing national history, other, less scrupulous people stepped in. Nations, to make sense of themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past. They can get it from scholars or they can get it from demagogues, but get it they will. The endurance of nationalism proves that there’s never any shortage of fiends and frauds willing to prop up people’s sense of themselves and their destiny with a tissue of myths and prophecies, prejudices and hatreds, or to pour out the contents of old rubbish bags full of festering incitements, resentments, and calls to violence. When serious historians abandon the study of the nation, when scholars stop trying to write a common history for a people, nationalism doesn’t die. Instead, it eats liberalism. Liberalism is still in there. The trick is getting it out. There’s only one way to do that. It requires grabbing and holding onto a very good idea: that all people are equal and endowed from birth with inalienable rights and entitled to equal treatment, guaranteed by a nation of laws. This requires making the case for the nation.”
― Jill Lepore, This America: The Case for the Nation

“No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France