Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls." - Meaning and context.">
p. 76
 • Cf. also Mosca's "Political Formula"
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Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls.

— Bertrand de Jouvenel

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls." in the context of "p. 76
 • Cf. also Mosca's "Political Formula"" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Bertrand de Jouvenel" (Quotes, On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth (1949): (Sometimes also alternatively entitled: "The Natural History of Its Growth"). Translated by J. F. Huntington. New York: The Viking Press. (Original French work published 1945)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 19, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Bertrand de Jouvenel

About Bertrand de Jouvenel

Bertrand de Jouvenel des Ursins (31 October 1903 – 1 March 1987), a late French aristocrat, was a philosopher, political economist, and futurist. Among other places, he taught at Oxford, the Cambridge, Yale and Berkeley.