Die Träume seiner Jugend nicht vergessen

Though from afar the whole caboodle might make some of us giggle a little (though not me, who am proud of the whole damn thing), perhaps as an inoculation against the stiffening that almost inevitably comes with age (and not just in the joints), we mustn’t forget, let alone scorn, the high dreams our younger selves held and fought for, as the alternative is nothing less than the hideous cynicism that taints everything that surrounds us in these gloomy days of post-truth.
 

"[...] eglino vorrieno un predicatore che insegnasse loro la via del Paradiso, et io vorrei trovarne uno che insegnassi loro la via di andare a casa il diavolo; [...] mi parrebbe una bella cosa, et degna della bontà di questi tempi, che tutto quello che noi habbiamo sperimentato in molti frati, si esperimentasse in uno; perché io credo che questo sarebbe il vero modo ad andare in Paradiso: inparare la via dello Inferno per fuggirla."

– Niccolò Machiavelli, lettere a Francesco Guicciardini, 17 maggio 1521.

"Driven to admit that there is, perhaps, some tension in society, when perhaps overwhelming pressure brings industry to a standstill or barricades to the streets years after the liberals had dismissed the notion as 'dated romanticism', the journalist invents the theory that this constitutes a clash of generations. Youth, after all, is not a permanent condition, and a clash of generations is not so fundamentally dangerous to the art of government as would be a clash between rulers and ruled."

– Stuart Christie & Albert Meltzer, The Floodgates of Anarchy, Stanmore, 1970.