Politics & Power Quote by Paul Harris

Supremacy is being treated here less like a trophy than a lease with an expiration date. Paul Harris, a lawyer by training and a civic organizer by temperament, frames power as cyclical, almost contractual: today’s dominant nation is tomorrow’s cautionary tale. The phrasing does a lot of work. “Supreme above all others” carries the swagger of empire, but “during one age” immediately clips it back down to human scale. “Eclipsed” is the killer verb: it suggests not just decline, but the humiliating clarity of replacement, like a light blotted out by a larger shadow.

The intent reads as warning and prophylactic. In the early 20th century, Harris lived through the whiplash of shifting empires, industrial acceleration, and World War I’s demonstration that “advanced” nations could also be catastrophically self-destructive. As a lawyer, he’s fluent in the language of precedent: no matter how exceptional a country believes itself to be, history has case law against permanence.

The subtext is aimed at national vanity. It’s an argument for humility disguised as realism, and for cooperation disguised as self-interest. If power is temporary, then building durable relationships matters more than chest-thumping. That resonates with the Rotary ethos Harris championed: international networks, professional ethics, civic service. Read that way, the line isn’t just geopolitical fortune-telling; it’s a pitch to trade triumphalism for institutions and habits that survive the spotlight moving on.