E tanto a Grã-Bretanha quando o mundo sabiam que a revolução lançada nestas ilhas não só pelos comerciantes e empresários como através deles, cuja única lei era comprar no mercado mais barato e vender sem restrição no mais caro estava transformando o mundo. Nada poderia detê-la. Os deuses e os reis do passado eram impotentes diante dos homens de negócios e das máquinas a vapor do presente.

destruction of the past, or rather the social mechanisms that link one's contemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century. Most young men and women at the century's end grow up in apermanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times in which they live

La repugnancia a hacer la guerra no debe confundirse con la negativa a luchar

The periodic famines, the burden of labour which made men old at forty and women at thirty, were acts of God; they only became acts for which men were held responsible in times of abnormal hardship or revolution.