💬 Quotes

"History is not just a list of dates and kings, but the biography of civilizations through the mechanism of challenge and response."

"The language of challenge and response is the language of history. It is through facing and overcoming severe trials that a society stimulates its creative minority to generate growth."

"As civilizations grow, the creative minority becomes a dominant minority, relying more on force than on intellectual and spiritual leadership, which initiates the process of social disintegration."

"Mankind achieves civilization not by ecological luck, but by responding to punishing environments that demand extraordinary exertion."

"The supreme manifestation of spiritual progress is the transformation of a universal state into a universal church, carrying the soul of a dying civilization into a higher cultural order."

"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it."

"The very opposite of what they desire is what the wicked achieve; for they strive after happiness, but wickedness itself cuts them off from it."

"O you who sow your seed in the fields of human thought, why do you seek a harvest of vain glory when you can have the sure rewards of philosophy?"

"What is this fleeting thing you call fame? Think on the vastness of eternity and the boundless reaches of space, and you will blush at the narrow limits of your renown."

"All fortune is good fortune, whether it be joyful or sorrowful; for it is either a reward for the good, a correction for the wicked, or a trial for the strong."

"And I must tell you that the Great Kaan is the monarch who holds the greatest domain, the greatest power, and the greatest treasure that ever was in the world."

"When you have ridden and gone through this country, you come to a province named Tangut... The people are idolaters, and have a strange language."

"And the people of this city are all subjects of the Great Kaan, and use paper-money as currency. The way it is made is so simple that it is quite a marvel."

"The women of this country are of great beauty, and live in such a state of freedom that they may do as they please, provided they commit no crime."

"They are a people who live by trade and crafts, and they have great abundance of silk, from which they weave stuffs of great price."

"And I will tell you all about it because I have written it down in this book, and because I saw it with my own eyes, so that none can say it is false."

"The first is the blood of the martyrs, which is the seed of the Church."

"None can hurt us, unless we hurt ourselves."

"Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

"Though they take away our estate, our bodies, and our lives, yet can they not hurt our souls, nor separate us from the love of God."