Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
T. E. LawrenceRead
Yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake it in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle between youthful idealism and the conservative forces of the past that seek to reshape progress into familiar patterns.
In this quote, T. E. Lawrence illustrates the tension between the aspirations of youth, who are driven to create a new and improved world, and the older generation, which often clings to the old ways. Despite the energy and victory achieved by the young, they find themselves overpowered by the established norms and experiences of the elderly, who reshape the young's achievements to fit their understanding of the world. This highlights how progress can be hindered by past traditions and the difficulty of maintaining change against the weight of established beliefs.
Themes
ChangeYouthProgressTraditionVictory
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about innovation in technology, one might refer to this quote to emphasize the need for a new perspective.
More from T. E. Lawrence
All quotes →All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
T. E. LawrenceRead
In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade.... The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance.
T. E. LawrenceRead
The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
T. E. LawrenceRead
Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.
T. E. LawrenceRead
We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves; yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.
T. E. LawrenceRead
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