Macaulay quote
(On the emancipation of Jews in Britain, but much more widely applicable): If there be any proposition universally true in politics it is this, that foreign attachments are the fruit of domestic misrule. It has always been the trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable at home, and then complain that they look for relief abroad; to divide society, and then to wonder that it is not united; to govern as if a section of the State were the whole, and to censure the other sections of the state for their want of patriotic spirit. If the Jews have not felt towards England like children, it is because she has treated them like a step-mother.
(As quoted in W.T. Stead's 1886 pamphlet on Irish Home Rule, For Home and Gladstone, quoted in turn in Frederic Whyte's 1925 biography of Stead.) It is not difficult to think of contemporary examples which can be substituted for "Jews" and/or "England" in the last sentence.
Although I have no idea of the context Macaulay was writing about, I find this an astonishingly clear statement from a writer who I don't normally regard as a source of inspiration.
(As quoted in W.T. Stead's 1886 pamphlet on Irish Home Rule, For Home and Gladstone, quoted in turn in Frederic Whyte's 1925 biography of Stead.) It is not difficult to think of contemporary examples which can be substituted for "Jews" and/or "England" in the last sentence.
Although I have no idea of the context Macaulay was writing about, I find this an astonishingly clear statement from a writer who I don't normally regard as a source of inspiration.