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

More quotes by John Buchan

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We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
John Buchan
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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.
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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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He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.
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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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Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.
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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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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
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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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Without humility there can be no humanity.
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You see only the productions of second-rate folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge, the deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But, believe me, my friend, it is there.
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Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.
John Buchan
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Our sufferings have taught us that no nation is sufficient unto itself, and that our prosperity depends in the long run, not upon the failures of our neighbors but their successes.
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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.
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.
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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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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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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.
John Buchan