It is in many circumstances a troubling thing to belong to the advanced class of a backward nation. One surrenders coherence and begins a difficult process of choice which ends, often, in an eclectic idiosyncrasy.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.
As countries grapple with modernization, people who are left behind tend to hold firmer and firmer to their view of the evil of modernity.
Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
There is a recurring temptation for any nation, and for any writer who operates within its field of force, to make an ornament of the past: to turn the losses to victories and to restate humiliations as triumphs.
We may feel the pain of falling back from a level of affluence to which we have grown accustomed, but most people in developed countries are still, by historical standards, extraordinarily well off.
To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Never go backward. Attempt, and do it with all your might. Determination is power.
In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated.