عاد وحيداً و سعيداً ، مع ثلاثة كؤوسٍ موضوعةٍ أمامه على الطاوله : اثنان فارغان ، وواحد نصف مملوء و عليه آثار أحمر شفاه . رتَّبَ الكؤوس لتُشكِّلَ مثلثاً ، لكنه حين… - Gore Vidal

...Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist.

As for the human case, the generation of men come and go and are in eternity no more than bacteria upon a luminous slide, and the fall of a republic or the rise of an empire — so significant to those involved — are not detectable upon the slide even were there an interested eye to behold that steadily proliferating species which would either end in time or, with luck, become something else, since change is the nature of life, and its hope.

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.