Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c49IR // #c49Synthesis

There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the ... Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records.

— In our words · Source: Tragedy and Hope (Carroll Quigley)

[Use when]

When the establishment is dismissed as a figure of speech — Quigley studied this one for twenty years and read its secret records.

[Why it matters]

The book's most famous admission, in Quigley's own voice: a named network — the Round Table Groups — operating internationally for a generation, studied by him for twenty years with two years of access to its papers and secret records.

More from Tragedy and Hope

#c33Western Civilization, on the contrary, did not pass from the Age of Crisis to the Age of Universal Empire, but instead was able to reform…When someone declares a civilization finished because its growth slowed — ask whether it is dying or… #c34(a) it is a period of declining rate of expansion; (b) it is a period of growing tensions and class conflicts; (c) it is a period of…When growth stalls and the culture war gets weirder at the same time — check the sequence, not just the… #c35In time, this system of commercial capitalism became petrified into a structure of vested interests in which profits were sought by…When an industry's profits come from blocking entrants rather than serving customers — you are looking at…