Peter Padfield famous quotes

Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries.
-- Peter Padfield

#Philosophy #Struggle #Past

The reason territorial monarchs failed time after time against maritime powers was not that absolutist, non-consensual governments were incapable of building great fleets in peace - quite the reverse - but that they were unable to fund them in the crises of war. Mainly this was because they were forced to divert resources from the fleet to their armies, to fight territorial rivals frequently financed by their maritime enemy from the profits of sea trade.
-- Peter Padfield

#War #Army #Fighting

Wealth from trade was the mainspring of Western material advance; the visible agents of change were great guns. These came of age in Europe in the 15th century. On land their potency in reducing castle walls favoured central over local power, since in general only monarchs could afford siege-trains; so nation-states were consolidated and extended into great territorial empires. At sea, guns transformed sailing ships into mobile castles virtually impregnable to opponents who lacked equally powerful ordnance. With the ocean-going gunned warship, western Europe began to extend around the globe.
-- Peter Padfield

#Wall #Powerful #Ocean

Philip could not have wanted to annex England militarily, since this would have opened another costly occupation struggle, and brought France in against him. He might, however, neutralize Elizabth by supporting her internal Catholic enemies, even provoking civil war.
-- Peter Padfield

#War #Struggle #Catholic

It is clear that the flame of True Freedom had passed with naval supremacy and constitutional, consultative government from the United Provinces to Great Britain, where it was regarded with quite as much national pride.
-- Peter Padfield

#Pride #Government #Flames

Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.

Science has revealed that the human body is made up of millions and millions of atoms... For example, I am made up of 5.8x10^27 atoms.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

The struggle of today is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they're both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.

Often we want people to pray for us and help us, but we always defeat our object when we look too much to them and lean upon them. The true secret of union is for both to look upon God, and in the act of looking past themselves to Him they are unconsciously united.

Any city may have one period of magnificence, like Boston or New Orleans or San Francisco, but it takes a real one to keep renewing itself until the past is perennially forgotten.

If you don't have a vision for the future, then your future is threatened to be a repeat of the past.