"Like most other people, Gibbon tended to perceive reality in accordance with the position he occupied in the social structure. As a gentleman scholar, he produced what elsewhere I have called "gentlemen's history," a genre heavily indebted to an upper class ideological perspective. In 1773, we find him beginning a work on his magus opus, A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, while settled in a comfortable town house tended by half-a-dozen servants. Being immersed in what he called the "decent luxuries," and saturated with his own upper-class prepossession, Edward Gibbon was able to look kindly upon ancient Rome's violently acquisitive aristocracy. He might have produced a much different history had he been a self-educated cobbler, sitting in a cold shed, writing into the wee hours after a long day of unrewarding toil. No accident that the impoverished laborer, even if literate, seldom had the agency, agency to produce scholarly tomes."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesCritics from the United StatesCultural criticsMedia critics
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Parenti
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti (September 30, 1933 – January 24, 2026) was an American political scientist, historian and media critic.
129 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Michael Parenti →
Related Quotes
"Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they s…"
"It may come as a surprise to some academics, but there is a marked relationship between economic power and political …"
"No country that pursues an independent course of development shall be allowed to prevail as a dangerous example to ot…"
"The few remaining communist governments, such as North Korea and Cuba, were no longer porÂtrayed as instruments of Mo…"
"In sum, the Nobel Peace Prize often has nothing to do with peace and too much to do with war. It frequently sees "pea…"
"After years of encirclement and repeated rebuffs from Washington, years of threat, isolation, and demonization, the P…"
"Countries with ostensibly democratic governments often maniÂfest a markedly undemocratic state power."
"History has many unanswered questions, but it is no mystery as such—except for those who make it so."
"For years the Dalai Lama was on the payroll of the CIA, an agency that has perpetrated killings against rebellious wo…"
"The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve t…"