Quote

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
Kind
Small
Reformers
History
Condemned
Past
Repeat
Remember
Repeats
Doe
Surrender
Find
Dare
Reformer
Giving
Darkness
Chart
Even
Gives
Hasty

More quotes by John Buchan

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I once played the chief part in a rather exciting business without ever once budging from London . And the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you know.
John Buchan
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I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.
John Buchan
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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
John Buchan
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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.
John Buchan
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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.
John Buchan
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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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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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What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie? he asked. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
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I would have been content with any job however thankless, in any quarter however remote, if I had a chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and the solitary place glad.
John Buchan
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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.
John Buchan
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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.
John Buchan
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[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
John Buchan
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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.
John Buchan
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There may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.
John Buchan
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The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
John Buchan
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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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Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.
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Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.
John Buchan
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That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
John Buchan
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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.
John Buchan