Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c48IR // #c48Verbatim excerpt
the nineteenth century was, however hopeful in its general processes, a period of materialism, selfishness, false values, hypocrisy, and secret vices.

— Source: Tragedy and Hope (Carroll Quigley)

[Use when]

When someone romanticizes a golden age — ask what evils were working underneath it.

[Why it matters]

Quigley refuses nostalgia for the pre-1914 world: the horrors of 1914-1945 did not come from nowhere — they were the nineteenth century's underlying evils emerging 'in all their nakedness.'

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