Hero of Two Worlds Quotes

“Cristina Belgiojoso, who was so close to Lafayette at the end of his life, watched Lafayette’s reputation tarnished by the hands of more cynical commentators like Chateaubriand. “When he is given his place in history,” she said in 1850, “it will be recognized, I am sure of this, that his political mistakes were caused by too high opinion of the human species and of men; he judged the latter according to himself. One can understand the serious errors he made in attributing to others the integrity, the uprightness, and the sincerity that were only in him.”57”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“When I succeed everyone will applaud my efforts.” For anyone else, these might have been famous last words. For Lafayette, they were his opening lines.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“Declaration of Independence: “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”18 Lafayette took these words seriously. He believed them.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“For Lafayette, the proposal to purchase a plantation and set the slaves free was an extension of the courageous idealism that carried America into rebellion, revolution, and independence.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“The commander in chief categorically rejected becoming a dictator, staging a coup, or ruling by force. This powerful example of political self-abnegation was one of the most important virtues Washington modeled for Lafayette.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“Lafayette said to Mauroy, “Don’t you believe that the people are united by the love of virtue and liberty?” Mauroy replied the Americans were not some novel species, they were simply transplanted Europeans “who brought to a savage land the views and prejudices of their respective homelands.” He proceeded to give Lafayette a brief moral history of European colonization: “Fanaticism, the insatiable desire to get rich, and misery—those are, unfortunately, the three sources from which flow that nearly uninterrupted stream of immigrants who, sword in hand, go to cut down, under an alien sky, forests more ancient than the world, watering a still virgin land with the blood of its savage inhabitants, and fertilizing with thousands of scattered cadavers the fields they conquered through crime.”3 This, Mauroy informed Lafayette, was the reality of the “new world” toward which they sailed.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“One day at sea, Lafayette said to Mauroy, “Don’t you believe that the people are united by the love of virtue and liberty?” Mauroy replied the Americans were not some novel species, they were simply transplanted Europeans “who brought to a savage land the views and prejudices of their respective homelands.” He proceeded to give Lafayette a brief moral history of European colonization: “Fanaticism, the insatiable desire to get rich, and misery—those are, unfortunately, the three sources from which flow that nearly uninterrupted stream of immigrants who, sword in hand, go to cut down, under an alien sky, forests more ancient than the world, watering a still virgin land with the blood of its savage inhabitants, and fertilizing with thousands of scattered cadavers the fields they conquered through crime.”3 This, Mauroy informed Lafayette, was the reality of the “new world” toward which they sailed.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“The uncouth revolutionaries of the street once again made it possible for the polite salon revolutionaries to achieve their ends.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“Beloved by two families--one in France, the other in America--Lafayette found that whenever he crossed the Atlantic, he was always coming home.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution

“Divining cynical motives in others often makes us feel we are revealing hard truth. But, as often as not, the bleak reductivism distorts as much as it clarifies.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“brief moral history of European colonization: “Fanaticism, the insatiable desire to get rich, and misery—those are, unfortunately, the three sources from which flow that nearly uninterrupted stream of immigrants who, sword in hand, go to cut down, under an alien sky, forests more ancient than the world, watering a still virgin land with the blood of its savage inhabitants, and fertilizing with thousands of scattered cadavers the fields they conquered through crime.”3 This, Mauroy informed Lafayette, was the reality of the “new world” toward which they sailed.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“Soldiers mistreated by civilian authorities often cease guarding the flame of liberty, and instead use its last embers to heat the branding iron of military dictatorship.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“John Quincy Adams delivered the official memorial in the House of Representatives. “Pronounce him one of the first men of his age,” Adams said, “and you have not yet done him justice… turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of every age and every clime—and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?”48 Adams went on. Lafayette discovered no new principles of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. [But] born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities, at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if inspired from above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“The sword nobility believed they deserved their rank and status because their ancestors once stood courageously by the king at Agincourt and Castillon, not because their father recently made a fortune selling barrels of salted fish.”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution

“The Lafayettes claimed an ancient noble lineage stretching back to the year 1000, which included a maréchal de France who fought alongside Joan of Arc;”
― Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution