God and Gold Quotes

“We can choose not to think about our power and its meaning for ourselves or for others, but we cannot make that power disappear and we cannot prevent decisions taken in the United States from rippling out beyond our borders and shaping the world that others live in and the choices that they make. Nor can we prevent the way that others see and react to our power from shaping the world we live in and affecting the safety and security of Americans at home.”
― Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World

“The United States is both a conservative power, defending the international status quo against those who would change it through violence, and a revolutionary power seeking to replace”
― Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World

“What Beatrice was to Dante, Guinevere to Lancelot, business has been for millions of English-speakers. They have wooed her as assiduously as Paris wooed Helen.”
― Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World

“back burner, with intervals of détente, reversals of alliance, and many changes in fortune. After the failure of the Armada in 1588, Spain could not attack England at home. English forces were never strong enough to wage sustained warfare on the Spanish mainland. Instead, the intermittent conflict moved indecisively through what we would now call the third world—the scattered colonial dependencies of the two powers and over the trade routes and oceans of the world. English hawks, often Puritans and merchants, wanted an aggressive anti-Spanish policy that would take on the pope while opening markets; moderates (often country squires uninterested in costly foreign ventures) promoted détente.”
― Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World