Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 9 (p. 153)
“I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.”
Early career years (1898–1929)
Source: The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter III.
“You don't cause problems. An unpiloted vampire causes problems. You cause catastrophes.”
Magic Burns
Variant: You don't cause problems. You cause catastrophes.
Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 7: What Kind Of Human Being Do You Want?
Context: The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know. All these therapies, all these techniques, religious or otherwise, are only perpetuating the agony of man.
The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: All of us are responding to the fact there is no system that can keep any promises. Everybody is fighting each other under the illusion that it is the "other people" that are causing the problem. We don't realize that we are all in the same boat. We are all suffering from the absence of a system that can pull us together and assure us that the results of each person's work will come back to him and enhance his life in some way.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans today offer any vision of how we can overcome our present difficulties and build a more satisfying life. Both offer merely palliatives and, at best, a holding pattern. We have to look beyond the politicians to see a different future.
“Then empty rumour to well-grounded fear gave strength.”
Vana quoque ad veros accessit fama timores.
Book I, line 469 (tr. E. Ridley).
Pharsalia
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 32, “Coppers, Cobblers and Crowds” (p. 227)
Source: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
