Commerce
"The image of the Other that Europeans had when they set out to conquer the planet is of a naked savage, a cannibal and pagan, whose humiliation and oppression is the sacred right and duty of the European–who is white and Christian. The cause of the exceptional brutality
Books
"[Herodotus] understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as the mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them. As a citizen of the
History
"The beloved village priest, that staple figure of Romantic fiction, was a very rare breed [in 18th-century rural France]. In most people's minds, the man in black was supposed to be useful, like a doctor, a snake-catcher or a witch. He should be willing to
History
"The Pseudo-Dionysius's works were a triumph of the Neoplatonist imagination. In an age of science like our own, they seem wildly fanciful. The lists of seraphim, cherubim, thrones, powers, and the other grades of angelic beings seem like an elaborate fantasy game. However, in an age
Commerce
"[The ability to transfer debts to another person is] what determines money's value–and why money, even though it is nothing but credit, cannot just be created at will by anyone. For sellers to accept buyers' IOUs in payment, they must be convinced of two things.
Commerce
"Precisely because chivalric ideals had little relevance for modern pike-and-artillery warfare, they became all the more cherished by those who dreamed of far-off lands. Places in that vast unknown territory called the 'Indies' that were either uninhabited or occupied by pagans rightfully belonged to
Politics
"[Latin America] must pass from nationalism to interdependence, but interdependence is senseless without a basis in independence. Only independent nations can become interdependent partners. If not, they become protectorates, neo-colonies, subject states." -- Carlos Fuentes, Foreword, Ariel by José Enrique Rodó (Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 1988)
Philosophy
"To propose to a man that he be someone else, that he become someone else, is to propose that he cease to be himself. Every man defends his own personality, and will agree to a change in his way of thinking or of feeling only in so far as
Life
"Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation
Commerce
"Wasting seven seams of coal meant the mine would have a shorter life, about forty years rather than 140 years if the coal from all ten seams was recovered. Dave questioned the logic of mining only three seams. The mine's financial officer provided an explanation: 'We
History
-- Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), pg. 309.
History
"Today we reel at the speed of globalization and long for the placid, pastoral times of, say, Edwardian Britain in the years before World War I. Yet people living in those times did not think their lives were placid or that the pace of change was slow. As suffragettes