Just 3 Quotes: The Spirit of the Age

05.17.2021

3 quotes from 3 books. Sent weekly.

Enjoy!

—Mark

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“Nothing is more alien to the spirit of the age than to suggest that anyone might seek inner freedom, for it suggests doubt as to the prevailing faith that the human world is improving.“

—The Soul of the Marionette, by John Gray (2015)

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“Cyclical time teaches you not just to accept the rhythms of history, but to look for ways to make use of them, to fulfill your role in those rhythms as best you can. It is an antidote to fatalism. If you wish to get more out of life (or nature), you have the power to do that, but it takes work. You and your society have the power to influence history, but that takes work too—and, always, your efforts must be appropriate for the time.”

—The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny, by William Strauss & Neil Howe (1996)

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“This schism still lives with Americans today. It is especially pronounced in the nation’s role in lands that lay, as Astoria did, beyond the borders of the United States. In these places is America a beacon of democracy that will unflaggingly support individual rights? Or is it a trade empire looking out for its best economic interests? Which comes first? Where is the priority?”

—Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival (2014)