History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.
Interpretation
Power shapes history, but understanding its hidden dynamics is essential for meaningful analysis.
This quote emphasizes that while power is a driving force in history, it often operates in unseen ways. Recognizing the underlying structures of power is crucial to comprehend how it influences events, and challenges us to investigate the depth of its impact rather than taking its presence for granted.
In practice
In a lecture on historical methodology, this quote can illustrate the complexity of power dynamics.
The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.
Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.
Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.
Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal_x000D_ seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention_x000D_ has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now_x000D_ greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death_x000D_ through freezing - a pleasant one.
For every nation that lives peaceably, there will be many others to grow hard and push their arrogance to extremes; the gods attend to these things slowly. But they attend to those who put off God and turn to madness.
Increasing extremism - across Africa and the world - must be understood in the context of the failure of our leaders properly to manage diversity within their borders.
It may be true that there are no atheists in foxholes. But you don't find many Christians there, either. Or, about as many of one as the other.
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