“Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995)

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.432

Fragments of Markham's notes
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: It is alike self-contradictory and contrary to experience, that a man of two goods should choose the lesser, knowing it at the time to be the lesser. Observe, I say, at the time of action. We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour need not be the opinion of the next. It may be different before the temptation appear; it may return to be different after the temptation is passed; the nearness or distance of objects may alter their relative magnitude, or appetite or passion may obscure the reflecting power, and give a temporary impulsive force to a particular side of our nature. But, uniformly, given a particular condition of a man's nature, and given a number of possible courses, his action is as necessarily determined into the course best corresponding to that condition, as a bar of steel suspended between two magnets is determined towards the most powerful. It may go reluctantly, for it will still feel the attraction of the weaker magnet, but it will still obey the strongest, and must obey. What we call knowing a man's character, is knowing how he will act in such and such conditions. The better we know him the more surely we can prophesy. If we know him perfectly, we are certain.

Preface.
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)
Context: We come after. We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant. In what way does this knowledge bear on literature and society, on the hope, grown almost axiomatic from the time of Plato to that of Matthew Arnold, that culture is a humanizing force, that the energies of spirit are transferable to those of conduct?

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The schools answered:— Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, or a bee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modern science, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that man is a bewildering complex of energies, which helps little to explain his relations with the ultimate Substance or Energy or Prime Motor whose existence both Science and Schoolmen admit; which Science studies in laboratories and Religion worships in churches. The Man whom God created to fill his Church, must be an energy independent of God; otherwise God filled his own Church with his own energy.

"Humiliated Putin scrambles to save face as Sweden and Finland join NATO: Russian leader says countries 'can join whatever they like' - and attacks the bloc's 'imperialist ambitions'" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10967023/Putin-insists-DOESNT-care-Finland-Sweden-join-NATO-denied-bombing-Ukrainian-mall.html, Daily Mail, 29 June 2022
2020s, On conducting a "special military operation" in Ukraine (24 February 2022)

Baldwin to the deputation at the end of July, 1936, as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 947, p. 955. <!-- Weidenfeld and Nicolson -->
1936
Context: We none of us know what is going on in that strange man's mind. We all know the German desire as he has come out with in his book [Mein Kampf] to move East, and if he moves East, I shall not break my heart, but that is another thing. I do not believe he wants to move West, because West would be a very difficult programme for him … If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolsheviks and Nazis doing it.

Source: The Idea of History (1946), p. 10

Source: The Mermaid Chair