# Quote — Lewis Lapham, Waiting for the Barbarians

> Well aware of both the continuity and contingency of human affairs, Adams and Madison searched the works of Tacitus and Voltaire and Locke like carpenters rummaging through their assortment of tools, knowing that all the pediments were jury-rigged, all the provisional, all the alliances temporary.

- Author: [Lewis Lapham](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lewis-lapham.md)
- Book: [Waiting for the Barbarians](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lewis-lapham/waiting-for-the-barbarians.md)
- Page: 64
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lewis_H._Lapham#Waiting_For_The_Barbarians_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/lewis-lapham/waiting-for-the-barbarians/well-aware-of-both

## More from this book

> But I had forgotten about the seven bowls of God's wrath stored in the minds of some of the unhappier prophets on the reactionary right,...

p. 133 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lewis-lapham/waiting-for-the-barbarians/but-i-had.md)

> What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text?

p. 31 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lewis-lapham/waiting-for-the-barbarians/what-kind-of-people.md)

> But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman Empire, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls.

p. 186 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lewis-lapham/waiting-for-the-barbarians/but-the-line.md)