Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
The perversity of nature in lavishing her most valued products on islands so small and impossibly remote prompted wonder and fable.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
No one (except perhaps a tyrant) has a private life that can survive public exposure by hostile directive.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
as nações nascem “de sonhos, canções, fantasias”.
Yuval Noah Harari • Nexus: Uma breve história das redes de informação, da Idade da Pedra à inteligência artificial (Portuguese Edition)
for those whose politics is founded on nostalgia, there is no need for imagination.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
When a history is contested – whether in the academic or political world – the narrative is often simultaneously altered or inflected.
Prasenjit Duara • The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Asian Connections)
On the eve of the close encounter with the West, China’s distinctive political trajectory (still dominated by its symbiotic relationship with Inner Asia) propelled it not towards an all-powerful oriental despotism (imagined by Europeans) – which might have permitted drastic change in the face of external challenge – but instead still further toward
... See moreJohn Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
the lack of a clear and recognised figure of executive authority—also wrecked their attempts at fighting coherently or effectively.
William Dalrymple • The Last Mughal
An important geographical distinction also operated. When Poland was attacked, in 1939, the Führer made a point of ordering his generals to act with ‘the harshest cruelty’. In effect he was inviting the Wehrmacht to ignore the conventions of civilized warfare when fighting in the East. He repeated the injunction in 1941 before the attacks on Yugosl
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