"Longevity conquers scandal every time"
About this Quote
Longevity is Foote's quiet cudgel: time, not virtue, is the real PR machine. "Conquers" turns reputation into warfare, and "every time" is the devastating flourish - a claim so blunt it sounds like experience talking rather than theory. Foote isn't offering moral comfort. He's pointing out a brutal asymmetry: scandal burns hot, but it burns out; persistence is cooler, slower, and harder to extinguish.
The intent is partly pragmatic, partly sardonic. Foote spent his life writing about the Civil War, a subject where reputations are endlessly relitigated and yet oddly stable. Generals get recast, causes get rebranded, and whole regions spend decades laundering stories into "heritage". The longer a figure or institution remains present - in books, monuments, classrooms, family lore - the more the scandal becomes a footnote or a rumor that "people used to say". Survival creates its own evidence. If you're still here, the world assumes you must have been meant to be.
Subtext: history is less a courtroom than a weather system. Outrage has a forecast; endurance has a climate. Foote also hints at how selective memory works. Scandal is detail-heavy and time-specific; longevity is narrative. Narratives are easier to retell, easier to institutionalize, easier to forgive yourself for believing. The line lands because it refuses to flatter the reader's sense of justice. It suggests the uncomfortable truth that "accountability" often loses to the simple fact of staying in the frame long enough for everyone to get tired.
The intent is partly pragmatic, partly sardonic. Foote spent his life writing about the Civil War, a subject where reputations are endlessly relitigated and yet oddly stable. Generals get recast, causes get rebranded, and whole regions spend decades laundering stories into "heritage". The longer a figure or institution remains present - in books, monuments, classrooms, family lore - the more the scandal becomes a footnote or a rumor that "people used to say". Survival creates its own evidence. If you're still here, the world assumes you must have been meant to be.
Subtext: history is less a courtroom than a weather system. Outrage has a forecast; endurance has a climate. Foote also hints at how selective memory works. Scandal is detail-heavy and time-specific; longevity is narrative. Narratives are easier to retell, easier to institutionalize, easier to forgive yourself for believing. The line lands because it refuses to flatter the reader's sense of justice. It suggests the uncomfortable truth that "accountability" often loses to the simple fact of staying in the frame long enough for everyone to get tired.
Quote Details
| Topic | Legacy & Remembrance |
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