“America has entered one of its periods of historical madness”

"The United States of America Has Gone Mad" (2003)
Context: America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness" by John le Carré?
John le Carré photo
John le Carré 42
British novelist and spy 1931

Related quotes

Bernard Lown photo

“Every historic period has had its Cassandras. Our era is the first in which prophecies of doom stem from objective scientific analyses.”

Bernard Lown (1921–2021) American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter, as well as a recipient of the…

A Prescription for Hope (1985)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons, November 12, 1936 "Debate on the Address" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/nov/12/debate-on-the-address#column_1117
Cited in Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth
This speech is also commonly known by the name "The Locust Years" http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/Locusts.html.
The 1930s

N. S. Rajaram photo

“what the history establishment has done through the models it has proposed for both the ancient and the medieval periods is to exactly reverse the historical picture.”

N. S. Rajaram (1943–2019) Indian mathematician

N.S. Rajaram: From Harappa to Ayodhya, Sahitya Sindhu Prakashana, Bangalore 1997, p.6;

Philip K. Dick photo

“Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on.”

VALIS (1981)

Rosa Luxemburg photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“This divine madness enters more or less into all our noblest undertakings.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Here Longfellow is translating or paraphrasing an expression attributed to a canon of Seville, also quoted as "we shall have a church so great and of such a kind that those who see it built will think we were mad".
Table-Talk (1857)
Context: "Let us build such a church, that those who come after us shall take us for madmen," said the old canon of Seville, when the great cathedral was planned. Perhaps through every mind passes some such thought, when it first entertains the design of a great and seemingly impossible action, the end of which it dimly foresees. This divine madness enters more or less into all our noblest undertakings.

Charles Evans Hughes photo

“Hierarchy has had six thousand years of trial. It will never succeed for long in any form. … My opinion is that we are at the historical climax (the flash point) of the totalitarian period.”

George Jackson (activist) (1941–1971) activist, Marxist, author, member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family

Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 130

Related topics