≡ Menu

Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 3 of Daniel Boorstin’s 1965 book, The Americans: The National Experience:

The sea helped New Englanders find resources, not in the land, but in themselves, and in the whole world.  The sea was the great opener of their markets and their minds.

DBx: Trade and commerce civilize.  Trade and commerce unite people.  Trade and commerce break down superstitions by exposing people who hold them to other ideas.  Trade and commerce teach and enlighten.  Trade and commerce enrich, both materially and ethically.  Trade and commerce promote peace.  Trade and commerce create society.

One of the most regrettable, repeated patterns of human thought is the notion that greatness and glory are found in the successful use of brute strength – in the strong or the best-weaponed subjugating others and restricting their freedom of thought and action.  And when this brute strength, being successfully established as a ruler, is cloaked in ermine, housed in marble buildings, and called by grand titles, it is worshipped as something super-human and (at least semi-)divine.  Too many people laud and celebrate military conquerors as well as state officials who extended and increased the power of the state.  It’s a childish and destructive sentiment.

Comments