Tragedy and Hope Quotes

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“It might be pleasant just to give up, live in the present, enjoying existential personal experiences, living like lotus-eaters from our amazing productive system, without personal responsibility, self-discipline, or thought about the future. But this is impossible, because the productive system could itself collapse, and our external enemies would soon destroy us.”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence co-operative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.” Carroll Quigley”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century.”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“For the West, even as it nominally ceases to be Christian, and most obviously in those areas which have, at least nominally, drifted furthest from Christianity, still has many of the basic Christian traits of love, humility, social concern, humanitarianism, brotherly care, and future preference, however detached these traits may have become from the Christian idea of deity or of individual salvation in a spiritual eternity.
T&H p. 1120”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“this book is almost inexcusably lengthy. For this I must apologize, with the excuse that I did not have time to make it shorter”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“the class struggles and imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict will probably serve to increase the speed of the civilization's decline because they dissipate capital and divert wealth and energies from productive to nonproductive activities.”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World In Our Time

“Stalin was like a shrewd old wolf of the north Siberian forest. Understanding nothing outside his own experience, he never forgot what happened to himself.”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“Of these the earliest, Sink Civilization, rose in the valley of the Yellow River after 2000 b.c, culminated in the Chin and Han empires after 200 b.c, and was largely destroyed by Ural-Altaic invaders after a.d. 400. From this Sinic Civilization, in the same way in which Classical”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“is this decline in the rate of expansion of a civilization which marks its passage from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict. This latter is the most complex, most interesting, and most critical of all the periods of the life cycle of a civilization. It is marked by four chief characteristics: (a) it is a period of declining rate of expansion; (b) it is a period of growing tensions and class conflicts; (c) it is a period of increasingly frequent and increasingly violent imperialist wars; and (d) it is a period of growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and otherworldliness. All”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

“From these studies it would seem that civilizations pass through a process of evolution which can be analyzed briefly as follows: each civilization is born in some inexplicable fashion and, after a slow start, enters a period of vigorous expansion, increasing its size and power, both internally and at the expense of its neighbors, until gradually a crisis of organization appears. When this crisis has passed and the civilization has been reorganized, it seems somewhat different. Its vigor and morale have weakened. It becomes stabilized and eventually stagnant. After a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, internal crises again arise. At this point there appears, for the first time, a moral and physical weakness which raises, also for the first time, questions about the civilization’s ability to defend itself against external enemies. Racked by internal struggles of a social and constitutional character, weakened by loss of faith in its older ideologies and by the challenge of newer ideas incompatible with its past nature, the civilization grows steadily weaker until it is submerged by outside enemies, and eventually disappears.”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time