We don't live in a world of fixed historical laws that says the-as you describe it-liberal state was born at a particular time, lived and died, and that's what we're stuck with. But there are reasons why some things are much harder to retain, to invent, to reinvent than others. (Tony Judt)

We don't live in a world of fixed historical laws that says the-as you describe it-liberal state was born at a particular time, lived and died, and that's what we're stuck with. But there are reasons why some things are much harder to retain, to invent, to reinvent than others.

Related topics

born harder historical live particular retain state stuck time world others things laws

Related quotes

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and, because it takes a man's life to know them, the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.

Ernest Hemingway

Thus the sum of things is ever being reviewed, and mortals dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.

Lucretius

In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world.

Margaret Mead

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

E. B. White

We live today in a world in which nobody believes choices should have consequences. But may I tell you the great secret that our culture seeks to deny? You cannot escape the consequences of your choices. Time runs in only one direction.

Stephen L. Carter