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Europe can be the scene of world history even if it’s not the protagonist in world history, but it seems to show very little sign of being the protagonist.

— Christopher Caldwell Christopher Caldwell on the Situation in Europe (2017)

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More quotes by Christopher Caldwell

When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident and strengthened by common doctrines, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009)

Bizarrely, as immigration began to change Europe at its economic and cultural core, the political vocabulary remained the same as when immigration had been a fringe phenomenon. People kept talking about restaurants.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009)

One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009)

In no country in Europe does the bulk of the population aspire to live in a bazaar of world cultures. Yet all European countries are coming to the wrenching realization that they have somehow, without anyone's actively choosing it, turned into such bazaars.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009)

If one abandons the idea that Western Europeans are rapacious and exploitative by nature, and that Africans, Asians, and other would-be immigrants are inevitably their victims, then the fundamental difference between colonization and labor migration ceases to be obvious.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009)

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Christopher Caldwell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.