Talk:Newfoundland (island)

Surplus

• We retain nothing, although we have conquered everything...France is chiefly, if not solely, to be dreaded by us in the light of a maritime and commercial power; and therefore by restoring to her all the valuable West India islands, and by our concessions in the Newfoundland fishery, we have given her the means of recovering her prodigious losses and of becoming once more formidable to us at sea...all the Spanish treasures and riches in America, lay at our mercy.
  • William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, Speech against the Treaty of Paris (December 1762)

• We use history to understand ourselves, and we ought to use it to understand others. If we find out that an acquaintance has suffered a catastrophe, that knowledge helps us to avoid causing him or her pain. (If we find that they have enjoyed great good luck, that may affect how we treat them in another way!) We can never assume that we are all the same, and that is as true in business and politics as it is in personal relations. How can we understand the often passionate feelings of French nationalists in Quebec if we do not know something about the past that has shaped and continues to shape them? Or the mixture of resentment and pride that formerly poor provinces such as Alberta and Newfoundland feel toward central Canada now that they have struck oil? In international affairs, how can we understand the deep hostility between Palestinians and Israelis without knowing something of their tragic conflicts?
  • Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008)