Mark Helprin Quotes
Though builders may build, in the main they follow the plans of architects. Teachers teach, but they must have a text. Politicians govern, but only upon the flow of commentary that raises them up or casts them down.
Helprin, Mark. Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto. HarperCollins, 2009.
Johansson is describing the origin of the word “hegemony.” During the 5th Century B.C. Athens and their allies formed the Delian League to combat the Persian Empire. Athens, as the most powerful city-state in Ancient Greece, controlled the alliance and the League soon turned into the Athenian “empire” or “hegemony.”
He had been one of the major provocateurs of the French revolution of 1848. When the uprising began he tried to force himself through a mob of onlookers. James Michael Curley used this quotation in his autobiography.
Mark Helprin is an American novelist, journalist, conservative commentator, Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. While Helprin's fictional works straddle a number of disparate genres and styles, he has stated that he "belongs to no literary school, movement, tendency, or trend".
