"The only difference between the narrator of contemporary affairs and the ordinary historian is that moral judgments about the present provoke fiercer reactions and have more immediately practical implications than moral judgments about the past."

-- Geoffrey Barraclough

#Past Quotes #Differences Quotes #Narrators Quotes

“American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.”
“It is in a way a mystery that, instead of demanding that their governments give primary attention to their own needs and aspirations, most of the citizens of big counties-those, that is, that have the status of being "powers" in the world-far from being self-centered or materialistic as they are commonly credited with being, the ordinary citizen and his elected representative all too often turn out to be romantics, ready and eager to sacrifice programs of health, education and welfare for the power and pride of the nation....”
“If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.”
“Show me a novelist â€“ or, indeed, a reader â€“ who wasnâ€™t a socially awkward, self-conscious adolescent, prone to clumsiness and excessive reading and Iâ€™llâ€¦ well, Iâ€™ll probably bang my shoulder on the door frame as I storm out. Many of the most unforgettable female fictional protagonists are gauche, self-doubting, plain and think too much.”
“None of us can know what tomorrow will hold, because each day has its good and its bad moments.”
“Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.”

Source : Stella Gibbons (1977). “Cold comfort farm”, Penguin (Non-Classics)
“War determines not who is right but who is left.”
“Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable.”

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