History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.
Interpretation
Power shapes history, but understanding its hidden dynamics is essential for meaningful analysis.
This quote emphasizes that while power is a driving force in history, it often operates in unseen ways. Recognizing the underlying structures of power is crucial to comprehend how it influences events, and challenges us to investigate the depth of its impact rather than taking its presence for granted.
In practice
In a lecture on historical methodology, this quote can illustrate the complexity of power dynamics.
The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.
Neither a life of anarchy nor a life under a despot should you praise. To all that lies in the middle has a god given excellence.
It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.
Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.
One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all.
Sustainability is a seemingly laudable goal - it tells us we need to live within our means, whether economic, ecological, or political - but it's insufficient for uncertain times. How can we live within our means when those very means can change, swiftly and unexpectedly, beneath us?
Through violence, you may murder the hater, but you do not murder the hate.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.