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History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.

John Buchan

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John Buchan
Age: 64 †
Born: 1875
Born: August 26
Died: 1940
Died: February 11
Barrister
Biographer
Former Governor General Of Canada
Journalist
Military Personnel
Novelist
Poet
Politician
Science Fiction Writer
Perth
Scotland
John Buchan
1st Baron Tweedsmuir
Lord Tweedsmuir
Remember
Repeats
Doe
Surrender
Find
Dare
Reformer
Giving
Darkness
Chart
Even
Gives
Hasty
Kind
Small
Reformers
History
Condemned
Past
Repeat

More quotes by John Buchan

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You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.
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He who would valiant be against all disaster let him in constancy follow the Master. There's no discouragement shall make him once relent his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.
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Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
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We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
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Fortunately for mankind the brain in a life of action turns more to the matter in hand than to conjuring up the chances of the future.
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It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.
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In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.
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I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate.
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The world was arrogant and self-satisfied, but behind all this confidence there was an uneasy sense of impending disaster. The old creeds, both religious and political, were largely in the process of dissolution, but we did not realise the fact, and therefore did not look for new foundations.
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[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
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Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.
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I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
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The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them at Inanda's Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten. It was the fashion of our forefathers.
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The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.
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Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to accept as divine justice what is called human law.
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I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.
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London is like the tropical bush -- if you don't exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.
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The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
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That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
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