“We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.”

—  Lev Grossman, The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler." by Lev Grossman?
Lev Grossman photo
Lev Grossman45
American novelist, journalist 1969

Related quotes

José Saramago photo

“To hope, Hope in what, Hope, just hope, one reaches a point where there is nothing but hope, and that is when we discover that hope is everything.”

José Saramago book The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Source: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1993), p. 108

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Brodie's Report

Source: Brodie's Report

Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“Man is able, and has the duty, to reach the furthest point on the road he has chosen. Only by means of hope can we attain what is beyond hope.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

Source: Report to Greco

Haruki Murakami photo

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Ben Carson photo

“It is important to call on God to intervene in our life, especially when we reach the point where we ourselves have become helpless.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 244

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola photo

“Thus we have reached the point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic.”
Quin eo deventum est ut iam (proh dolor!) non existimentur sapientes nisi qui mercennarium faciunt studium sapientiae.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

24. 155; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Winston Peters photo

“We have now reached the point where you can wander down Queen Street in Auckland and wonder if you are still in New Zealand or some other country.”

Winston Peters (1945) New Zealand politician

2005 speech on immigration policy, entitled "Securing Our Borders and Protecting Our Identity."'

Lin Yutang photo

“The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 23
Context: A reasonable naturalist then settles down to this life with a sort of animal satisfaction. As Chinese illiterate women put it, "Others gave birth to us and we give birth to others. What else are we to do?".... Life becomes a biological procession and the very question of immortality is sidetracked. For that is the exact feeling of a Chinese grandfather holding his grandchild by the hand and going to the shops to buy some candy, with the thought that in five or ten years he will be returning to his grave or to his ancestors. The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed.

“For too long, it was taken for granted that we would survive because we were Dutch; because Holland would take care of us. In our ignorant innocence or innocent ignorance we overlooked the fact that they were, and historically are, the rulers and we the ruled ones, and that power never renders itself; it has to be conquered, if not by sword then by the mind. And we neglected the mind. We have not studied our rulers well enough, otherwise we would have known that we were programmed to think that we are not programmed; that if we looked the other way long enough and denied the existence of colonialism it would automatically disappear. We forgot that we were trained not to see colonialism as colonialism.”

Joceline Clemencia (1952–2011) Curaçaoan writer

Source: Language is More Than Language in the Development of Curaçao https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000136432, 1999

Jack McDevitt photo

“When do we reach a point where people become responsible for their own actions?”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 13 (pp. 124-125)

Related topics