“A man who is a mere author is nothing. If there is anything good in anything I have written, it is the potentiality of adventure in me” - Thomas MacDonagh
“Telling a story at all changes your relationship to the events you are describing” (pg 47).
“Let’s grant for a moment that we are all revisionists now. That we all retell stories in light of our motives. The next question would be: What are your motives? What does this retold story do to the people hearing it, or to the person telling it? If we want noble things in life, we will pull those noble things out of our history and experience. If we are cynics, we will see plenty of justification for our cynicism . . . A false motive might produce a false history” (pg. 48).
“He was able to warn his compatriots against letting slogans do their thinking for them, and criticized those who were ‘really impelled by a sense of . . . fatalism, or by an instinct of satisfying their own emotions, or escaping from a difficult and complex and trying situation” (pg 54).
“We cannot help but bring our desires and our ambitions to our understandings, and so I think the only solution is to make sure we desire what is right and good” (pg. 55).
Grade: C
It was a bit heavy on the historical components that seemed forced. But that could just be me. When he talked about his actual life and experiences and hopes and struggles, I found it golden. Otherwise . . . meh.
For more on . . .