Quotations

"Civilizations die because they want to. Nations that live for the present and eschew a vision of their future do not take the trouble to raise children. Today’s demographic decline has precedents in the hollowing-out of Hellenistic Greece after the Alexandrian conquests, and the decline of Rome several centuries later." David Goldman in this essay.

“My supreme idea is to get on. I am prepared to thrust even love itself under the wheels of my Juggernaut if it obstructs the way.” David Lloyd George, writing to his future wife, Maggie Owen.

"Failure, so despicable in others, in oneself the only dignified thing." Claude Cockburn

'In this world it is essential always to be pushing, but fatal to seem so.' Benjamin Jowett

“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.” William Faulkner

“Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.” Flannery O'Connor

"My question is usually would this person be endurable if white. If [James] Baldwin were white nobody would stand him a minute.” Flannery O'Connor

"If John Smith weren't Scottish nobody would take him seriously." Margaret Thatcher was right about that.

"Feminism is poison." Margaret Thatcher

"We who are largely living off the Victorians' moral and physical capital can hardly afford to denigrate them." Margaret Thatcher in an address to the Greater London Young Conservatives in July 1976. I disliked her from the moment she became leader, despite having witnessed her kindness when she found me lost as a boy in the House of Commons and spent twenty minutes with me and my father. But I loved this remark and strongly agreed with it.

"Across OECD countries with available data, the mean number of children that men say they want to have is just under 2.2 and for women is around 2.3 — both of which are above the population replacement-rate level of 2.1." Jeremy Driver