Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

For the company of the great is good company as Shakespeare understood it, as Plutarch understood it. The past remains the source from which example and precept can still be drawn.

All normal human beings are interested in their past. Only when the interest becomes an obsession, overshadowing present and future conduct, is it a danger. In much the same way healthy nations are interested in their history, but a morbid preoccupation with past glories is a sign that something is wrong with the constitution of the State.

Without passion there might be no errors, but without passion there would certainly be no history.

A nation does not create the historians it deserves; the historians are far more likely to create the nation.

Discontent and disorder were signs of energy and hope, not of despair.

Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.