See that little stream, we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a whole month to walk to it, a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Fitzgerald compares a slow local walk to the slow, deadly advance of military empires.
- In plain terms
- An empire moves like a long line of people dying slowly to push forward.
- What can you take from it?
- Consider the human cost of large-scale expansion.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Is progress worth the cost?
- How do we measure history?
Another view
The metaphor simplifies complex historical military movements into a single image.
More from F. Scott Fitzgerald
She's got to be a loyal, frank person if she's got to bitch everyone in the world to do it.
Permalink to quote #84 Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane... There is something awe-inspiring in one who h…
Permalink to quote #82 The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense, one stays young.
Permalink to quote #85
Related quotes
Thank God that sow's gone to the butcher.
Odilo GlobocnikOdilo Globocnik quote #1 Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Ass…
Lascelles AbercrombieLascelles Abercrombie quote #2 Whatever we saw in October 1941, cannot be compared to anything that we had seen prior, when our forces retreated from the Dniepr borders. Now, things like thi…
Hovhannes BagramyanHovhannes Bagramyan quote #4