The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.

Timothy Snyder
About This Quote

A quote from the book "The End of the Affair" by Graham Greene. In this quote, he is saying that as a society we have always been willing to go as far as we need to in order to achieve our goals. A lot of people have their moral beliefs and values completely disregarded in the name of wanting to achieve something. We have all had those moments where we try to bring our morals into a situation and find them being completely disregarded.

We often feel frustrated by this and it is a heart breaking feeling that we would like to avoid at all costs. However, if we take into account that we are all trying to live our own lives then we can't really be too upset when certain things happen.

Source: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century

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