The Great Seesaw Quotes

“One lesson of history is that every gain has its potential loss. The highest human achievements carry the danger of pride, and pride can lead blindly to disaster, just as failure can fortify the determination and so lead slowly towards triumph.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000

“If we disown history we are at its mercy. To have a reasonable knowledge of the past is to possess an anchor which is likely to prevent us from being swept towards false ideas about the present and future.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000

“Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000

“The First World War shook the scaffolding of progress because it was deadly and unexpectedly long: it showed that technology could be two-faced. The war delivered one other insidious attack on the idea of progress by raising a moral question which the believers in progress had taken for granted: had the morality of Europeans improved during the long era of 'progress'?”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000