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
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.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of history in education, this quote could illustrate how every moment matters.
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.
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.
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.
Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write.
The disorder, uncertainty, and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism.
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.
The sad souls of those who lived without blame and without praise.
The senses are a kind of reason. Taste, touch and smell, hearing and seeing, are not merely a means to sensation, enjoyable or otherwise, but they are also a means to knowledge - and are, indeed, your only actual means to knowledge.
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.
It's never acceptable to target civilians. It violates the Geneva Accords, it violates the international law of war and it violates all principles of morality.
Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.
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