My last words come from a comment made by an American student at a seminar during my days as graduate student at Oxford. After a paper discussing schisms within the church in the fifth and sixth centuries, this rather urbane individual affected a rural accent to sum the debate up: “You know,” he said, “people are kinda stoopid.”

From Adrian Goldsworthy’s The Fall of the West: The Slow Death of the Roman Superpower, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009, p. 423.

Addendum (April 2, 2017)

I love this quote plucked from one of my favorite books about the fall of Rome. Whenever I come across it in one of my uncharted journeys through my writings, I smile and smile at the American student’s words. Surprisingly, human stupidity is not widely recognized as the cause of all the troubles facing the human race. Cicero’s words to this effect come to mind readily (“Omnium malorum stultitia humani generis est matter,” February 19, 2015). And the fall of Rome is sufficient proof, too. Perhaps the only reason why this truth remains a secret to this day is human stupidity once again. The simplest of morals, indeed.