Quote of the Day (John Dos Passos, on History’s Use in ‘Times of Change and Danger’)

“In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”—American novelist John Dos Passos (1896-1970), “The Use of the Past” (1941), reprinted in The Theme Is Freedom (1956)