Quote of the Day:"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back again into bondage." -Sir Alex Fraser Tyler, 1742-1813, Scottish jurist and historian[h/t to Sarah fer digging this one up]
Wednesday Open Thread: Tell me about your day. Mine was long. And yours?
6 comments:
I wonder if we've reached the "apathy" stage yet. We certainly aren't past the selfishness.
Let's see, my Thursday was 13 hours long. Friday wasn't much better, but I'm home now. Could be worse.
Hope things are going OK with you.
I think we're at the accelerating downhill stage.
"...complacency to apathy..." That's where I think we are. When only 28% of the American public knows how many Americans have died in Iraq, 81% think the country on the wrong track, yet does nothing about it, apathy seems an apt description.
Great quote and I am a confessed quote junky. LIke this one:
"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of the ages, may be preserved by quotations." -- Isaac Disraeli
Or this:
"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." -- Somerset Maugham
But I think that second one has a bit of tongue in cheek quality, don't you?
...tongue planted firmly in cheek.
I would say the American Revolution was not from a stage of "spiritual faith". On the contrary, it was a development of the Age of Reason.
The quote itself may not be from Tytler at all, but here I think the idea is more important than that detail.
My day was good. Any day I am vertical and above ground is a good one. :D
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