Ch 6
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: The monks of the earliest days had not counted on the human ability to generate a new cultural inheritance in a couple of generations if an old one is utterly destroyed, to generate it by virtue of lawgivers and prophets, geniuses or maniacs; through a Moses, or through a Hitler, or an ignorant but tyrannical grandfather, a cultural inheritance may be acquired between dusk and dawn, and many have been so acquired. But the new "culture" was an inheritance of darkness, wherein "simpleton" meant the same thing as "citizen" meant the same thing as "slave." The monks waited. It mattered not at all to them that the knowledge they saved was useless, that much of it was not really knowledge now, was as inscrutable to the monks in some instances as it would be to an illiterate wild-boy from the hills; this knowledge was empty of content, its subject matter long since gone. Still, such knowledge had a symbolic structure that was peculiar to itself, and at least the symbol-interplay could be observed. To observe the way a knowledge-system is knit together is to learn at least a minimum knowledge-of-knowledge, until someday — someday, or some century — an Integrator would come, and things would be fitted together again. So time mattered not at all. The Memorabilia was there, and it was given to them by duty to preserve, and preserve it they would if the darkness in the world lasted ten more centuries, or even ten thousand years...
“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”
1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ronald Reagan 264
American politician, 40th president of the United States (i… 1911–2004Related quotes
1990s, Resignation Address (1991)
“We have taken our last backwards step.”
North and South, Book II https://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=vopVVBiC80g#General_Grant_s_Strategies (1986).
In fiction, <span class="plainlinks"> North and South, Book II http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090490/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast (1986)</span>
“Once we were Programmers. Maybe our last best hope is a movie.”
Re: PART TWO: winning industrial-use of lisp http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/856bccf3eff6ab53 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous
2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)
“Hey my love do you believe that we might last a thousand years or more if not for this?”
Two Step
Crash (1996)
“We hope the peace will last for twenty years. Then we will be here again.”
To the Sultan of Johore. Quoted in "Key to Japan" - Page 289 - by Willard Price - 1946.
NASA transcript http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a17/a17.clsout3.html
“America represented to my father, as Lincoln put it, "the last, best hope of earth."”
I would like to be able to say that this made my father a remarkable man for his time and his circumstances. For, in many ways, he truly was a wonder. But this is not one of those ways. Among the Hungarians I knew—aside from those who were true believers in the Communists—this was the common sense of the subject. It was self-evident to them.
"Born American, But in the Wrong Place" (2006)