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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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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
Guarantees
Supreme
Value
Study
Values
History
Best
Repeating
Guarantee

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
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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.
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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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It was foreordained that I should go alone to Umvelos', and in the promptings of my own infallible heart I believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home.
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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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The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
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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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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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Wise men never grow up indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.
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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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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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We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
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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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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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[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
John Buchan
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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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