The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticise them later.' You give this advice but can't always take it.
Hilary MantelRead
For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The value of raising children lies in the expectation that each generation will make progress and improve upon the past.
Hilary Mantel's quote emphasizes the importance of progress across generations. It suggests that the act of bringing children into the world should be driven by the aspiration that they will enhance society, culture, and the human experience, thereby creating a better future than what has already been established.
Themes
ProgressGenerationsChildrenImprovementFuture
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used during a graduation speech to inspire a new generation.
More from Hilary Mantel
All quotes βHistory is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
Hilary MantelRead
Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.
Hilary MantelRead
He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
Hilary MantelRead
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Hilary MantelRead
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
Hilary MantelRead
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It became clear to me that our value as people is not in our stock portfolios and bank accounts but in the legacies we leave behind.
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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busybodies and professional "public morals experts" in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
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It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faithβas mysterious as faith itself.
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The true exercise of freedom is - cannily and wisely and with grace - to move inside what space confines - and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted.
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We cannot change ideas in the minds of men and races with machine guns or battle ships.
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