# The Lessons of Tragedy  ## Metadata - Author: Hal Brands, Charles Edel - Full Title: The Lessons of Tragedy - Category: #books ## Highlights - “Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.” ([Location 66](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8TXBV5&location=66)) - The injunction to the Athenian citizenry was clear: the destiny of the state was in the hands of fallible men, and even in their hour of triumph great societies were perched on the precipice of catastrophe. ([Location 74](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8TXBV5&location=74)) - By looking disaster squarely in the face, by demonstrating just how quickly things could spiral out of control, the Athenians hoped their citizenry would be charged with the sense of mutual obligation and moral courage needed to avoid such a fate. ([Location 80](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8TXBV5&location=80)) - For an understanding of tragedy remains indispensable—as it always has been—to the conduct of statecraft and the preservation of world order. ([Location 87](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8TXBV5&location=87)) - Americans are losing their sense of tragedy. The U.S.-led international order has been so successful, for so long, that Americans have come to take it for granted. They have forgotten what that order is meant to prevent in the first place: the sort of descent into violence and great-power war that has been all too common throughout human history. ([Location 113](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8TXBV5&location=113)) - This amnesia has become most pronounced, ironically, as U.S. power and the international order are coming under graver threat than at any time in recent memory. Revisionist states are probing aggressively for weakness; democracy is in retreat as authoritarianism again advances; instability and upheaval have reached alarming levels; the global balance of power and resolve is gradually shifting in ominous ways. The United States and the world it created are once again courting tragedy, not least because Americans are losing their ability to imagine what tragedy really is. ([Location 117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8TXBV5&location=117)) - For the Greeks, theatrical and other dramatic representations of tragedy were public education. Tragedies were meant to serve as both a warning and a call to action. ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8TXBV5&location=140))