Amsterdam Quotes

“Opinions differ on the question of whether a golden age is something you can experience while it's happening or whether it only comes into focus on reflection...no matter how grand and prosperous and momentous the time in which you are living may be, its grandeur is inevitably stained by the incessant drabness of the present.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“...the curious Dutch classification gedogen, which means 'technically illegal but officially tolerated.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“For liberalism is a delicate thing. It encompasses so much -- constitutional government, democratic elections, freedom of worship, civil rights, free trade -- that we think of it as timeless and universal. But liberalism came into being in a real place and time, like a flame it has wavered in various eras, and it can be snuffed out.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“Where land was controlled by noblemen and/or the Church in other parts of Europe, in the province of Holland, circa 1500, only 5 percent of the land was owned by nobles, while peasants owned 45 percent of it.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“For individual freedom can come about only, can be conceived only, if there is some sense of security to life.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“There was actually a time when people wanted to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions (in 1935, Winston Churchill thought it possible that Hitler might “go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation”).”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“You could look at the work of any Dutch master for an idea of the morning light we cycle through. There is a white cleanness to it, a rinsed quality. It’s a sober light, without, for example, any of the orange particulate glow you get from the Mediterranean sun.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“a basic component of individual rights is the right to own property.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“There was actually a time when people wanted to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions (in 1935, Winston Churchill thought it possible that Hitler might 'go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation').”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“There, she identified a recurring cycle that kept women in a downward spiral: families that were already poor and struggling to stay alive kept having more babies, dragging them down still further. In the 1870s she became the country’s first advocate for contraception, and one of the first anywhere. In the midst of a society and a medical profession that were rigorously Victorian in their attitudes about sex, she had patients conduct trials of contraceptives and concluded that the pessary, a kind of diaphragm, was the most effective birth control device.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“The Dutch were among the earliest adopters of a new technology—the printed book—and”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“So how, in an increasingly interconnected world, do we integrate and still keep our values?”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“[Charles the Fifth], pretty much every way worked to hold up the pillars of the medieval world order: monarchic power, domination by the Catholic Church, feudal land management, divine right, mercantile colonialization, and obedience to authority along the strict metaphysical line of the great chain of being.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“As happens so often in history at the dying of one age and the birth of another, an era of phenomenal ugliness, strife, and chaos was about to unfold.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“You know what I’ve often said, ever since Auschwitz. Life is absurd. It has no meaning. But it has beauty, and wonder, and we have to enjoy that.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“You know what I’ve often said, ever since Auschwitz. Life is absurd. It has no meaning. But it has beauty, and wonder, and we have to enjoy that.” Her hand was still on his cheek, her arm”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“Life is absurd. It has no meaning. But it has beauty, and wonder, and we have to enjoy that.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“I realized that the working class and their employers all had the same aim: economic growth, nothing more,” Van Duijn told me. “We thought, we need to look beyond, to a politics of freedom and creativity and playing. So I started looking for which class would support a revolution in society.” He found it, and a new word was coined: provotariat. The provotariat were young people who had come of age since the war, who had no vested interest in the system that had come into being, who saw it as a threat to individualism and creativity, and who wanted to provoke a change of consciousness.”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

“While prostitution is legal and regulated (only EU citizens can prostitute themselves, since, as with any other job, a work permit is required),”
― Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City