Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
T. E. LawrenceRead
We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves; yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the cyclical nature of history where new achievements are often reshaped by old mindsets.
T. E. Lawrence highlights the struggle between progress and tradition. The quote suggests that despite the sacrifices and efforts made in pursuit of transformation and new beginnings, the forces of the past often resurface to reclaim control over the outcomes, thereby stifling true change. It serves as a reminder that achieving something new requires constant vigilance against reverting to old ways of thinking and being.
Themes
ChangeTraditionVictoryHistoryProgress
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on innovation, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of embracing change.
More from T. E. Lawrence
All quotes →All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
T. E. LawrenceRead
In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade.... The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance.
T. E. LawrenceRead
The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
T. E. LawrenceRead
Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.
T. E. LawrenceRead
When I am angry, I pray God to swing our globe into the fiery sun and prevent the sorrows of the not-yet-born: but when I am content, I want to lie forever in the shade, till I become a shade myself.
T. E. LawrenceRead
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