A Year of Prophesying by H.G. Wells — Read

It would be near the truth of things to say that the only events of permanent importance in human affairs are educational events. Except in so far as they demonstrate and teach or interrupt teaching, wars and treaties, kings and laws, and all the standard material of history are but the by-products of the educator's work. Some day, when we have escaped from the trumpery dignity of classical history, a new Gibbon will trace for us the failure in understanding and co-operation that made the Roman Empire no more than a staggering pretension and left Europe and Western Asia a festering cluster of nationalisms to this day. No conqueror can make the multitude different from what it is, no statesman can carry the world's affairs beyond the ideas and capacity of the generation of adults with which he deals, but the teachers -- I use the word in the widest sense -- can do more than either conqueror or statesman; they can create a new vision and liberate latent powers in our kind.

Or, if the perversity of their possibilities hold them, they can continue to put out the eyes of the children of men and let the world go on still under blind leaders of the blind.