QuoteProject
Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order.
Norman Davies
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the impermanence of both human life and political structures.

Norman Davies highlights the concept of transience, suggesting that both human existence and the systems of governance we create are inherently temporary. This reflection on the fleeting nature of life and politics encourages us to recognize and accept change as an inevitable aspect of our reality.

Themes

TransienceImpermanenceHuman ConditionPoliticsChange

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the nature of life, I would quote this to highlight the necessity of adaptation.

More from Norman Davies

The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad.
Norman DaviesRead
Nowadays, it is no longer possible to maintain that the Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939 was a fiction invented by bourgeois-imperialist enemies. Everyone has seen the film clips of Herr Ribbentrop landing in Moscow, and of Stalin smiling broadly as Ribbentrop and Molotov signed up side by side.
Norman DaviesRead
Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War.
Norman DaviesRead
Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today.
Norman DaviesRead
One might have thought that 70 years was time enough to work out what really happened in 1939. It isn't the case. Misunderstandings and misinformation abound.
Norman DaviesRead
I wanted to produce a book that would demonstrate not only the rich diversity of people who answered to Anders's command but also the extraordinary variety of their experiences and emotions: from death to despair, fear and longings and eventually to hope.
Norman DaviesRead

Similar quotes

Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition?
Jostein GaarderRead
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
EuripidesRead
How we experience memory sometimes, it's not linear. We're not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we're just seeing it in flashes overlaid.
Frank OceanRead
Everything lives by movement, everything is maintained by equilibrium, and harmony results from the analogy of contraries; this law is the form of forms.
Eliphas LeviRead
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
Henry MillerRead
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.
Brian AldissRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.