In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how the alleviation of dire social conditions can overshadow the negative aspects of a governing system.
Barbara Tuchman highlights the extreme adversities faced by people in a society founded on misery and want. She observes that when dire issues such as famine, disease, and corruption are eradicated in Communist China, the negative elements of the regime become less significant in comparison to the overall improvement in living conditions.
In practice
In a speech about social reforms, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of improving living conditions.
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
The villany you teach me I shall execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?
In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God's holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life.
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
When a man was hurt you took him to the maester, but what could you do when your maester was hurt?
God is the original, master forgiver. Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving, we are imitating his style. I am not at all sure that any of us would have had imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first.
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