The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreRead
It's the mix of the trivial and the great events that make up history. It's the low things about high people that make it fascinating, and that's why it would be a shame to exclude the trivial things. That mixing up is not just at the heart of history. It's at the heart of how to live a great life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
History and life are shaped by a blend of significant and everyday moments.
This quote emphasizes the importance of both monumental and mundane experiences in shaping history and our lives. Simon Sebag-Montefiore suggests that the interplay between the trivial aspects of life and the notable events enriches our understanding of history and contributes to a meaningful existence, encouraging us to appreciate the fullness of our experiences.
Themes
HistoryLifeTrivialGreatnessExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of history in education, this quote could illustrate how every moment matters.
More from Simon Sebag-Montefiore
All quotes →The vanishing of David Tang is like the unthinkable diappearance of a magnificent palace on a mythical mountaintop. He was a dreammaker, pianist, adventurer, writer, entrepreneur, scholar, connoisseur, and a great friend.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreRead
The political lives of tyrants play out human affairs with a special intensity: the death of a democratic leader long after his retirement is a private matter, but the death of a tyrant is always a political act that reflects the character of his power.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreRead
Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreRead
The disorder, uncertainty, and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreRead
A revolution resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreRead
Similar quotes
Pleasure, so called, is the murderer of serious thought. This is the age of excessive amusement. Everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle!
Charles SpurgeonRead
Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.
John Greenleaf WhittierRead
But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord." "It might to keep it open.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
Ayn RandRead
People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.
Stephen CoveyRead
Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.
Jeanette WintersonRead