Historians once assumed that when childhood mortality was high, people must not have loved their children very much; it would have been too painful. Research has since proved that assumption wrong.
Jill LeporeRead
We have discharged one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We find only that we forget, when times are good, that times were ever bad.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the cyclical nature of debt and the tendency to forget past struggles during prosperous times.
Jill Lepore's quote highlights a critical observation about societal behavior towards debt and economic hardship. It suggests that while we may relieve one generation of debtors, the problems of debt and financial difficulties persist across generations. The assertion that good times tend to make us forget past adversities serves as a reminder that economic cycles repeat themselves, and awareness of history is crucial to avoid making the same mistakes again.
Themes
DebtHistoryCyclesForgettingStruggleEconomy
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on economic history, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of remembering past financial crises.
More from Jill Lepore
All quotes →Americans like to get rich fast. That this means we go broke fast, too, is something that we have become very good at forgetting. Our ignorance of history is matched only by our unfailing optimism; it's actually part of our optimism.
Jill LeporeRead
History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what to do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.
Jill LeporeRead
Similar quotes
The great mystery isn't that people do things badly but that they occasionally do a few things well. The only thing that is universal is incompetence. Strength is always specific! Nobody ever commented, for example, that the great violinist Jascha Heifetz probably couldn't play the trumpet very well.
Peter DruckerRead
Be ruthless about protecting writing days....althoug h writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it.
J. K. RowlingRead
The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Your faith has saved you; go in peace.
Luke The EvangelistRead
The devil is in the details, and everything we do in the military is a detail.
Hyman RickoverRead
If you spend too much time worrying about how other people perceive you, you'll never break the rules.
John SculleyRead