Daily Inspiration Quote by John Fiske

A philosopher’s hype line, sharpened into theology. Fiske isn’t just praising Columbus-era navigation; he’s trying to rename history’s hinge points so the “New World” becomes the West’s secular salvation story. By measuring the voyage against “the birth of Christ,” he borrows Christianity’s timeline - the most widely internalized yardstick in his audience - to canonize an imperial turning point as if it were a second Nativity: not divine incarnation, but the inauguration of modernity.

The phrasing does quiet work. “We shall be inclined” pretends modest consensus, a gentlemanly shrug that smuggles in an enormous value judgment. “Pronounce” carries courtroom authority: this isn’t wonder, it’s verdict. And “the way to this New World” is tellingly indirect, a euphemism that turns conquest into “access,” making the violent, contingent mechanics of encounter feel like destiny opening a door.

Context matters: Fiske wrote in late-19th-century America, when Anglo-Saxonist confidence, industrial power, and a hunger for origin myths were thick in the air. His broader project often treated history as evolutionary progress, with “advanced” civilizations as the implicit endpoint. So the quote reads less like neutral philosophy than cultural statecraft: it elevates discovery into a moral alibi, positioning the Americas not as inhabited worlds disrupted, but as history’s rightful next chapter.

Its intent is to consecrate a narrative of inevitability - and, by consecrating it, to make dissent sound like heresy.