A Quote by Christopher Hitchens

History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.

Christopher Hitchens

Quote Topics

History Morality Tale

Quote Author

Christopher Hitchens
American - Author
April 13, 1949 - December 15, 2011

History is a tragedy, not a morality tale.

I. F. Stone

The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

D. H. Lawrence

We certainly did take the country from the Indians. Right. So, but what's going on here, as I would call it a, sort of, morality tale. What the progressives do is, they take a few nuggets of American history, Columbus' arrival, then the founder's compromise with slavery, and what they do is they fast forward to their favorite episode, so to speak, and they create a story out of that leaving a whole bunch of facts out.

Dinesh D'Souza

'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.

M. J. Rose

To restore morality we must first recognize the source from which all morality springs. From our earliest history in 1776 when we were declared to be the United States of America, our forefathers recognized the sovereignty of God.

Roy Moore

The delight we experience when we allow ourselves to respond to a fairy tale, the enchantment we feel, comes not from the psychological meaning of the tale (although this contributes to it) but from its literary qualities-the tale itself as a work of art.

Bruno Bettelheim

The difference between a fairy tale and a sea tale? A fairy tale starts with "Once upon a time". A sea tale starts with " This ain't no $hit"!

Edith Widder

How can you construct a morality if there's no morality inherent in the way things are? You might be able to delude yourself into thinking you had 'created' a morality, but that's all it would be, an illusion.

John Lennox

History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities.

Graydon Carter

The modern history of economic theory is a tale of evasions of reality.

Thomas Balogh, Baron Balogh

To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.

T. S. Eliot

If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.

Polybius

From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror.