
Source: " A Case of Voluntary Ignorance http://www.christiebooks.com/ChristieBooksWP/2013/11/a-case-of-voluntary-ignorance-by-aldous-huxley/" in Collected Essays (1959)
"Nationalism and Nationism" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nationalism-debate-nation-states/ (3 April 2019), National Review
2010s, 2019
Source: " A Case of Voluntary Ignorance http://www.christiebooks.com/ChristieBooksWP/2013/11/a-case-of-voluntary-ignorance-by-aldous-huxley/" in Collected Essays (1959)
Introduction, as translated by H. B. Nisbet (1975)
Variant translation: What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
Pragmatical (didactic) reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and indefeasibly of the Present, and quicken the annals of the dead Past with the life of to-day. Whether, indeed, such reflections are truly interesting and enlivening, depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral reflections must here be specially noticed, the moral teaching expected from history; which latter has not unfrequently been treated with a direct view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate the soul, and are applicable in the moral instruction of children for impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of peoples and states, their interests, relations, and the complicated tissue of their affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present.
Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 6 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
[John Wiley & Sons, 1996, Applied Cryptography 2nd edition Source Code in C, Bruce Schneier, http://www.schneier.com/book-applied.html]
Cryptography
Last words, 10/16/46. Quoted in "Justice at Nuremberg" - Page 506 - by Robert E. Conot - History - 1984
As quoted in The New York Times (27 May 1984)
“And so we, too, must act on behalf of justice. We, too, must act on behalf of peace.”
2013, Eulogy of Nelson Mandela (December 2013)
Context: The struggles that follow the victory of formal equality or universal franchise may not be as filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before, but they are no less important. For around the world today, we still see children suffering from hunger and disease. We still see run-down schools. We still see young people without prospects for the future. Around the world today, men and women are still imprisoned for their political beliefs, and are still persecuted for what they look like, and how they worship, and who they love. That is happening today. And so we, too, must act on behalf of justice. We, too, must act on behalf of peace. There are too many people who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality. There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people. And there are too many of us on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard.
“Experience is a wonderful teacher, but one whose lessons come too late.”
Volume 2: In Green's Jungles (2000), Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)
“5037. Three are too many to keep a Secret, and too few to be merry.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“In such countries, genocide is not too important…”
Comments about Rwanda attributed to President Mitterrand by Philip Gourevitch in "Reversing the Reversals of War," The New Yorker, 26 April 1999.
Attributed