Great Throughts Treasury

"The century also brought forth social engineering, the practice of shoving large numbers of human beings around as though they were earth or concrete. Social engineering was a key feature in the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, where it combined with moral relativism - the belief that right and wrong can be changed for the convenience of human societies - and the denial of God's rights. To Hitler the higher law of the party took precedence over the Ten Commandments. Lenin praised the Revolutionary conscience as a surer guide for mankind than the conscience implanted by religion"

"The background to what we call the Renaissance was a cumulative growth and spread of wealth never before experienced in world history, and the rise of a society in which intermediate technology was becoming the norm, producing in due course a startling revolution in the way words were published and distributed. But this does not mean the Renaissance was an economic, let alone a technological event. Without economic and technological developments it could not have taken the form it did. But it must be grasped that the Renaissance was primarily a human event, propelled forward by a number of individuals of outstanding talent, which in some cases amount to genius."

"The closed circle of lawyer and gentry MPs who directed the first phase of the Civil War... found themselves obliged, in extremis, to summon the assistance of a submerged section of the people, and bring them into the political nation in the form of constitutional warriors. Parliament won the war, in the end without difficulty, because in the New Model Army it had enfranchised the people... bringing into play a new class of humble folk who, for the first time in English history - for the first time in world history - were called upon by the State to serve not just with their bodies, but with their mental and spiritual energies, not as cannon-fodder, but as sentient and thinking individuals... it was a giant step forward in the liberation of mankind from darkness."

"The declining dynamism of the US economy observable in the 1960s and 1970s was very much a regional phenomenon largely confined to the Northeast, the old manufacturing core, the ?smokestack industries.? Beginning in the 1920s, encouraged by the New Deal?s state capitalism, and hugely accelerated by World War Two, was the rise of America?s 'Pacific Economy'... The shift of America?s centre of gravity, both demographic and economic, from the Northeast to the Southwest, was one of the most important changes of modern times."

"The decade 1870-80 was a key one in the history of the world, and from it tragic events flowed momentous consequences, not least for the English... the world was going England?s way: hence the almost crazy optimism of the 1850s and 1860s."

"The demographic projections for Europe tell a dismal tale. I remember telling an international conference on European culture, held in Vienna 40 years ago, that Continentals should stop boasting about it and put their pricks where their mouths are by raising the birthrates. I used colourful language to stress the point and provoked fury. Alas, nearly a generation later my warnings are proving only too accurate. Even if the EU expands to include Russia, the USA is on course to overtake it in population, let alone GNP. By 2050 the ratio of pensioners to active workers will more than double, jumping from 24 to 50 per cent. Europe is falling behind in advanced sectors. 74 per cent of the 300 leading information firms are now American, one reason why America wins so many Nobel prizes and continental Europe so few."

"The effect of the penal legislation and the manner in which it was enforced was to create the modern Irish problem, as it existed until the 20th century: a landless Catholic peasantry governed by a legally exclusive Protestant ruling class, with a small predominantly Protestant middle class sandwiched in between, and a multi-class Protestant enclave in Ulster. The separate communities were divided not only by religion but by race and, not least, by culture: they learned different poetry, sang different songs, celebrated different victories and mourned different calamities."

"The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures."

"The debates... could only have taken place in England... certain peculiar developments in English history - developments rooted many centuries back, and ultimately resting on the geography of England, and the composition of its people - allowed the thing to happen; and so the world is as it is."

"The English are a huge force for good and evil: producing, with relentless energy and fertility, new ideas and men of dauntless courage to thrust them on society; rich, also, in instincts of decency, imperious in asserting the moral law, remorseless enemies of injustice, avid for philanthropy, profoundly anxious to refashion the globe on lines of purity and reason; but also, simultaneously, blind and prejudiced, clinging desperately and often violently to the past, worshipping unreason in a thousand ways, uniquely vulnerable to the corruptions of class and snobbery and xenophobia, cruel by indifference and conservative by tradition."

"The English industrial revolution of 1780-1820 is the great watershed in the history of mankind. It liberated the body, as the Reformation had liberated the mind."

"The English aroused little affection. In general, they were cordially disliked... it was only to be expected that a wealthy, fortunate and successful country like England should arouse envy and criticism; so long as such feelings were confined to words, and tempered by respect, or if necessary fear, there was no cause for concern."

"The events of this century should remind us that the hopes of mankind almost always prove illusory, and that we have only a limited ability to devise permanent and equitable solutions to problems which spring from human nature. Violence, shortage amid plenty, tyranny and the cruelty it breeds, the gross stupidities of the powerful, the indifference of the well-to-do, the divisions of the intelligent and well-meaning, the apathy of the wretched multitude - these things will be with us to the end of the race."

"The English were perfectly capable of combining doctrinal orthodoxy with rabid anti-clericalism, though they were equally capable of favoring heresy if they thought it would suit their purposes... Most of the English, in so far as they took any interest in religion, were Anglicans, as they always had been. They wanted an English Church, run by Englishmen. They did not object to a link with Rome provided the Pope did not interfere, especially in appointments and finance. They thought there were too many idle, dissolute and criminal clergymen, and objected strongly to the fact that some of them were foreigners. The public took a prejudiced view of clerical behavior... London juries hated clergymen even more than Welshmen...On the other hand, there was, and had been for nearly two centuries, an important and active minority working for radical reforms of doctrine and organisation in the Church. They represented a streak of heterodoxy (Pelagianism to Lollardy) in England which went right back to the earliest days of Christianity in England... Thus, when the breach with Rome came, a very ancient English tradition, maintained admittedly only by a minority, was available to supply doctrinal nourishment."

"The English presence in Ireland arose from the failure of Irish society to develop the institution of monarchy. The Irish, of course, had kingship; too much of it indeed. In Ireland the high king reigned but did not rule."

"The Greeks learned not only to portray the human body as it is seen, but to present it in realistic action, and in the context of its surroundings. By foreshortening and other illusionistic devices, they contrived to conquer pictorial space. The Romans inherited their knowledge and skills and in their friezes were see examples of the effective use of linear and aerial perspective, foreshortenings and other tricks. In what we call the Dark Ages, this form of sophisticated illusionary art disappeared, and its techniques were lost. Artists reverted to the primitive visual technology of aspective art. However, enough survived of illusionism, in the Byzantine world and in Italy, for artists to note it and in due course to imitate it."

"The fundamental misconception to which even the more enlightened British statesmen and pundits have clung: that if only Britain gave Ireland justice, prosperity and wise government, the British connection would be accepted by her people. Alas, it is of the essence of wise government to know when to absent itself. Britain has learned by bitter experience in Ireland that there is no substitute for independence."

"The general effect of the "Last Judgment" is to make most people think seriously about what is likely to happen to them when they die, and though they may not accept Michelangelo's version of the likely events, they are wiser for having studied it. That is exactly the effect he sought to achieve."

"The Greeks were inventive, and produced some scientists and engineers of genius, and the Romans were able to build on their work to carry out projects on a scale that is often impressive even by today's standards and appeared superhuman to medieval man. But there was something suspect about Roman monumentality. It was built on muscle-power rather than brain-power. The forts, the roads, the bridges, the enormous aqueducts, the splendid buildings, were put up thanks to a conscript or servile multitude. Considering the wealth of the Roman Republic in its prime, its technology was minimal, barely in advance of Athenian Greece, and confined largely to the military sphere. Even in the navy, the Romans made pitifully little use of sail-power, preferring oars rowed by galley slaves. Technology stagnated."

"The ideas flung across that communion table have travelled round the world, hurled down thrones and subverted empires, and have become the common everyday currency of political exchange. They are still with us. Every major political concept known to us today, all the assumptions which underlie the thoughts of men in the White House, or the Kremlin, or Downing Street, or in presidential mansions or senates or parliaments through five continents, were expressed or adumbrated in the little church of St Mary."

"The inquiry begins with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712?78), who was the first of the modern intellectuals, their archetype and in many ways the most influential of them all."

"The literature of English history is enormous and constantly increasing... How can any one person hope to familiarize himself with such an enormous output, let alone master it? Yet it would be a tragedy if writers of history were to allow themselves to become, like the physical scientists, the inhibited prisoners of available knowledge, and accept ant-like roles in a huge, impersonal industry, which no one mind felt capable of surveying as a whole. As one brilliant young historian has wisely observed, "History does belong to everyman: that is a strength, not a weakness." The people have a right to be taught their history in a form they can grasp. If this is acknowledged to be impossible, then the labors of professional historians seem to me to be largely futile, self-indulgent and self-propagating exercises in mere antiquarianism. A certain ruthlessness is required, a willingness to accept the responsibility of making choices and forming judgments, a readiness to select, discount and discard... To write general history it is necessary to make choices, almost on every page. This I have done, without bravado but also without fear and if I am often wrong, I have the comforting words of a distinguished Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, who has observed that there are times "when a new error is more life-giving than an old truth, a fertile error than a sterile accuracy.""

"The industrialization of half a dozen major economies took place by courtesy of British tools, patents, industrial know-how and skilled personnel; and it was largely financed by British capital. By 1840 Britain had œ160 million invested abroad; by 1873 nearly œ1,000 million. During this period international trade multiplied five times over, and passed the œ2,000 million mark. The railway-steamship age created the modern world-market economy; the English device of the gold standard was generally adopted, and centred on London as the financial pivot of the liberal international trading system. For the English, it was the high water mark of their fortunes relative to the rest of the world. English ideas, institutions, attitudes, tastes, pastimes, morals, clothes, laws, customs, their language and literature, units of measurements, systems of accountancy, company law, banking, insurance, credit and exchange, even - God help us! - Their patterns of education and religion became identified with progress across the planet. For the first time, the infinite diversities of a hundred different races, of tens of thousands of regional societies, began to merge into standard forms: and the matrix was English."

"The one clear result of the Peasants' Revolt was to delay the Reformation in England by 150 years. The kings, Lancastrian, Yorkist, even Tudor, took on a new role as the custodians of religious orthodoxy. Fear of economic and political subversion sent the ruling class back to the old, discredited altars... The English eventually approached the business of changing their religion, if that is a correct description of what happened in the middle decades of the 16th century, in a characteristically haphazard and confused manner, and were later to congratulate themselves on the constitutional propriety with which it was done, and the admirable compromise which they eventually evolved. Yet the breach with Rome, and indeed the three centuries of growing hostility to the papacy which preceded it, had comparatively little to do with religion as such; its principal dynamic was anti-clericalism, which was itself a form of English xenophobia... The Becket affair made it clear that henceforth two powers, one national, the other international, would be in a permanent state of tension and often of conflict, with public opinion inevitably moving in support of the national position."

"The meeting was officially styled the General Council of the New Model Army, the force which has recently annihilated the armies of King Charles and was now the effective master of the country."

"The past is infinitely complicated, composed as it is of events big and small, beyond computation. To make sense of it, the historian must select and simplify and shape. One way he shapes the past is to divide it into periods. Each period is made more memorable and easy to grasp if it can be labelled by a word that epitomizes its spirit. That is how such terms as 'the Renaissance' came into being. Needless to say, it is not those who actually lived through the period who coin the term, but later, often much later writers. The periodization and labelling of history is largely the work of the 19th century. Although the Italian elites of the time never used the word 'Renaissance', they were conscious that a cultural rebirth of a kind was taking place, and that some of the literary, philosophical and artistic grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome was being recreated... If the term has any useful meaning at all, it signifies the rediscovery and utilization of ancient virtuesl, skills, knowledge and culture, which had been lost in the barbarous centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, usually dated from the fifth century AD."

"The physical power of Cromwellian England was based essentially on the new learning. This was a time for talent to manifest itself. To Milton, London was 'a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty', where men were 'reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement'; or as John Hall put it in 1649, England was imbued with 'the highest spirit, pregnant with great matters... attempting the discovery of a new world of knowledge'. Sir Arthur Haselrig, MP, summed up the whole experiment in a phrase: the country was 'living long in a little time'."

"The Reformation in England made explicit a declaration of independence from the Continent which was rooted in a thousand years of political and intellectual development."

"The problem which faced Elizabeth on her accession was how to bring to an end the violent oscillations in the State religion, to de-escalate the rising frenzy of doctrinal killings, and, if possible, to take religion out of politics. By temperament she was agnostic. To her, religious belief must be subordinate to the needs of public order and social decorum... She agreed with the Duke of Norfolk when he told her: "England can bear no more changes in religion. It hath been bowed so often that if it should bend again it will break." ...She took the view, shared by the overwhelming majority of her subjects, that doctrine was not a thing that any sensible person would kill or be killed for. She hated capital punishment by instinct and reason. It seemed to her monstrous to kill a man for his beliefs alone; only four people were executed for heresy in her reign, none of them Catholics... As for private views: "I seek not to carve windows into men's souls." What she was looking for was a lowest common denominator of agreement on religious matters, underwritten by statute, upheld by the State, and accepted by the public as reasonable. What she would not tolerate was anyone who strove to upset such a settlement by force; that was treason, because it was aimed at the tranquility of the realm, and was certain to lead to bloodshed. Thus Elizabeth was forced, with the greatest reluctance, to turn first against the Catholics and then against the Puritans. She did not want to persecute anyone; but both groups, in the end, left her with no alternative."

"The Reformation was a typical piece of English conservatism, conducted with the familiar mix of muddle, deviousness, hypocrisy, and ex post facto rationalization. Henry was never quite clear in his own mind whether he wanted an actual change in religion, though there is evidence that in his last years he was moving in that direction... He had no plan of action, moving from one expedient to another... On the other hand... it may be that Cromwell, one of the ablest men who ever served the Crown, was far more deliberate and systematic in his methods than his master, Henry, or than appears at first sight. Cromwell was a parliamentary manager; it was on his advice that the Reformation was carried through by Parliament, in the most punctilious and thorough constitutional manner, providing the Crown with a massive overkill of statutory weapons for present and future use against Romanism... Cromwell's explanation was no doubt that Parliament, itself the national repository of anti-clericalism, was the best guarantor of the permanency of the breach with Rome. And so it proved. After the Reformation Parliament, it became impossible for the Monarch (irrespective of personal religious views) to decide such matters in a parliamentary context. It was very significant that Queen Mary had to go to Parliament to get Henry's laws reversed: and on certain matters it declined to do so. Mary could not really put the clock back without destroying Parliament and operating a personal tyranny... Parliament's sovereignty in spiritual matters had thus been formally acknowledged even by a fanatically Catholic queen. After that the Elizabethan settlement was simple and obvious."

"The story of the English is an instructive one, for others as well as themselves... a backward island gently washed by the tides of Continental cultures; its separate development rudely forced out by the tides of colonization; independence seized, repeatedly lost, at last firmly established within a complex racial mold; the intellectual divorce from the Continent; the expansion overseas; the crystallization, within the island, of an entirely new material culture, which spreads over the Earth; the moment of power and arrogance, dissolving into ruinous wars; the survival and the quest for new roles... there is nothing in it which in inevitable; but nothing purely accidental either."

"The Renaissance was the work of individuals, and in a sense it was about individualism. And the first and greatest of those individuals was Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Dante was a Florentine, appropriately because Florence played a more important role in the Renaissance than any other city. He also embodies the central paradox of the Renaissance: while it was about the recovery and understanding of ancient Greek and Latin texts, and the writing of elegant Latin, it was also about the maturing, ordering and use of vernacular languages, especially Italian."

"The retreat from free trade left Britain isolated... It had taken more than a century for Adam Smith?s doctrines to win acceptance and implementation. By 1875, however, they were the supreme orthodoxy. Free trade was traditional... It was what England was all about. Abandon free trade, merely because some frightened foreign governments had lost faith in it?.. No leading politician of either party was prepared even to contemplate such a proposal. The depression of the 1870s exposed the English public mind at its worst: drugged by a dogma which had once enshrined empirical truth."

"The study of history suggests that the sum total of intolerance in society does not vary much. What changes is the object against which it is directed. Those who shape the conventional wisdom at the top are always anxious to censor unorthodoxy, thus demonstrating their power and consolidating their grip."

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."

"The threat to Elizabeth from the Puritans was far greater, and she was in the end obliged to take it seriously. English Puritanism was born among the Marian exiles of the 1550s; it was thus an alien import... The Puritans, like the Roman Catholic extremists, believed that religion was the only important thing in life, whereas most Englishmen thought it was something you did on Sundays. They were influential out of all proportion to their numbers because, like the Communists in our own age, they were highly organized, disciplined, and adept at getting each other into positions of power. They were strong in the universities... They oozed hypocrisy... They did not believe in free speech. They believed in a doctrinaire religion, imposed by force and maintained by persecution... They were the mirror-image of the Counter-Reformation... They privileges the Puritans claimed for themselves they would certainly have denied to others... Puritanism was the dynamic behind the increase in witch-hunting."

"The truth is that the English are not, and have never been, a religious people. That it why toleration first took root in our country. There were, to be sure, plenty of religious zealots in England... but all together they never made up more than a minority. It is a matter for argument whether England has ever been a Christian country. The English like to be baptized, to get married in church, to be buried in consecrated ground; they pray in times of peril, they take a mild interest in religious controversy, and like to clothe the State in religious forms. But they are not truly interested in the spiritual life. We must not think of the Middle Ages in England as a religious era. It was a time when the priestly caste occupied a major role in society and in the economy... The Church was a profession... Protestantism was a more meaningful faith than Catholicism for the English, but only for a minority... On the whole it is doubtful whether, at any time in history, more than 50% of the English people have attended Sunday services regularly or paid more than lip-service to their church. This is not true of many other countries. In the United States, even today, well over 50% regularly go to services on sabbatical days. In Scotland, Ireland and Wales it is likely that, until recent decades, observance was the custom of the great majority, and religion played a meaningful role in their lives."

"The U.S. is the nearest thing to a microcosm of world society, with every people represented in its vast democracy. This is why I regard anti-Americanism as racism; it, in effect, amounts to a hatred of humanity itself."

"The United States was thus the posthumous child of the Long Parliament."

"The truth is, language is the most democratic of all institutions. People determine how they speak themselves, and they are driven by simple self-interest."

"The United States, in a lawless and dangerous world where the U.N. cannot impose order ? in fact sometimes makes disorder worse ? has become a reluctant authority figure, a stepfather or foster parent to a dysfunctional and violent family. As such, it is resented and abused, all the more so since it wears the uniform of its role, the ability to project military power in overwhelming strength almost everywhere in the world. The fact that, in logic, America's critics may be grateful to a nation which, in the past as in the present, has been essential to their liberty and well-being by resisting and overcoming totalitarianism, or suppressing threats to civil society by terrorism, makes no difference to the resentment; may even intensify it. The people among whom anti-Americanism is most rife, who articulate it and set the tone of the venom, are the intellectuals. They ought logically to hold America in the highest regard, for none depend more completely on the freedom of speech and writing which America upholds, or would suffer more grievously if the enemies against whom America struggles were to triumph and rule or misrule the world. Indeed, many of the most violently anti-American intellectuals benefit directly and personally from America's existence, since their books, plays, music, and other creations enjoy favor on the huge American market, and dollar royalties form a large part of their income. You might think that some of these intellectuals ? British, French, German for instance ? who have been particularly abusive of the U.S. would renounce their American royalties. But not one has done so."

"There were many great men in Lincoln's day ...yet Lincoln seems to have been of a different order of moral stature, and of intellectual heroism. He was a strong man... without vanity or self-consciousness - and also tender... he invariably did the right thing, however easily it might be avoided. Of how many other great men can that be said?"

"This book is dedicated to the people of America--strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched."

"This political underpinning of the Reformation was reinforced by the creation of a huge vested interest in its permanency. But the end of Henry's reign, the bulk of the monastic lands had passed into the hands of private individuals... giving the propertied classes a direct, financial interest in the dissolution. After 1545, there were very few wealthy or influential Englishmen who did not have a personal stake in the Reformation."

"This was all very well: Columbanus's success indicates the appeal of his mission. But his activities, for the first time, brought the nature of Celtic monasticism firmly to the attention of the Church authorities -- to western bishops in general, and to the Bishop of Rome in particular. The Irish monks were not heretical. But they were plainly unorthodox. They did not look right, to begin with. They had the wrong tonsure. Rome, as was natural, had 'the tonsure of St Peter', that is, a shaven crown. Easterners had the tonsure of St Paul, totally shaven; and if they wished to take up an appointment in the West they had to wait until their rim grew before being invested. But the Celts looked like nothing on earth: they had their hair long at the back and, on the shaven front part, a half-circle of hair from one ear to the other, leaving a band across the forehead."

"Though a time of great plenty, it was not an era of greed. When Andrew Carnegie wrote, "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced," he was not engaged in empty sloganeering. The Scottish immigrant spent more than $350 million on charitable causes, including millions for the construction of more than 2,800 public libraries. Nor was Carnegie alone among "robber barons" in using private fortune for public good. It was Colonel Jim Fisk who came to the rescue of Chicago after its great fire of 1871. Likewise, railroad magnate Edward Henry Harriman heaped generosity upon San Francisco following the infamous earthquake of 1906. Leland Stanford, Daniel Drew, and Cornelius Vanderbilt - derisively labeled "robber barons" by the denizens of academia today - all gave more than their surnames to establish famous centers of learning."

"The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy."

"The virtue we should cherish most is the courage to resist violence, especially if this involves flying in the face of public opinion which, in its fear, and in its anxiety for peace, is willing to appease the violators. Above all, violence should never be allowed to pay, or be seen to pay."

"There is no evidence that the English Catholics, as a group, wanted to expel their Queen. Most of them did not care a damn for the Pope; they never had done. What did they care for was the mass, and certain other spiritual comforts of the old religion. They were, like the genuine Protestants, a minority group, and Elizabeth would have been prepared to give them minority rights. But the papacy, by excommunicating Elizabeth, and by instructing English Catholics to depose her, branded them with treason... The Catholics could not logically plead that they still served the Queen without renouncing the Pope; they were either bad Catholics, by papal definition, or bad Englishmen... The English are not particularly logical, but they saw the logic of this problem clearly... The Elizabethan persecution of Catholics was thus justified by the needs of State and public security... Elizabeth preferred fines and imprisonment to execution; she killed on average no more than 8 a year... But she could not save the English Catholic community; at her death only about 10,000 were still prepared to publicly declare themselves Romanists."

"There can be no doubt that Roosevelt believed every word of these sentiments and did his best to live up to them."