1920s, The Genius of America (1924)
Context: It is the natural and correct attitude of mind for each of us to have regard for our own race and the place of our own origin. There is abundant room here for the preservation and development of the many divergent virtues that are characteristic of the different races which have made America their home. They ought to cling to all these virtues and cultivate them tenaciously. It is my own belief that in this land of freedom new arrivals should especially keep up their devotion to religion. Disregarding the need of the individual for a religious life, I feel that there is a more urgent necessity, based on the requirements of good citizenship and the maintenance of our institutions, for devotion to religion in America than anywhere else in the world. One of the greatest dangers that beset those coming to this country, especially those of the younger generation, is that they will fall away from the religion of their fathers, and never become attached to any other faith.
“After the many hundreds of generations that Australian, East Asian, African, European and indigenous American populations of Homo sapians developed in isolation from each other, in different environments, there ought to be divergence aplenty, though nowhere near to speciation. And so there is. That is why a roomful of Australian aborigines looks nothing like a roomful of Hungarians, and neither looks anything like a roomful of Quechua-speaking South American indigenes.”
We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)
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John Derbyshire 27
writer 1945Related quotes
All for Australia (1984)
Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 134.
“Makes Room at the Top look like a vicarage tea-party.”
The Daily Telegraph, reviewing Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; cited from The Bookseller, October 25, 1958, p. 1641.
Also used as a tagline for the 1960 film adaptation.
Criticism
The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770 (2007)
This quote was instead first mentioned in a 1931 book titled “Since Calvary: An Interpretation of Christian History” by the comparative religion specialist Lewis Browne.
Disputed