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2 ideas
19613 | It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran] |
Full Idea: It is equally futile to refuse or to accept the social order: we must endure its changes for the better or the worse with a despairing conformism, as we endure birth, love, the weather, and death. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Reactionary') |
19627 | Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Opportunists have saved nations; heroes have ruined them. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Defense') | |
A reaction: Siegfried smashes the staff of Wotan. Napoleon looks like a hero, but he increasingly looks like the single most disastrous figure ever to have emerged in Europe. It took the Germans till 1940 to avenge what he did. |