Comment by stana
10 hours ago
"in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." (Harry Lime in the movie "The Third Man")
If you want greatness, throw human suffering at it
Cute.
In reality, of course, they produce a great deal more than cuckoo clocks; one of the most competitive pharmaceutical industries in the world, industrial chemicals, defence technology, agriculture, financial services, food processing, etc - up to a trillion or so per annum IIRC.
The cuckoo clock was intended to be a contemporary reference to the Renaissance period, not an exhaustive assessment of what Switzerland contributed to the present day.
In the flow of comments;
the timeframe does not appear to be pinned to the Renaissance period. Further, the quote I replied to was from The Third Man a movie made and released in 1949 that was set in post world war II Vienna.
Further again, that quote appears to address present era Switzerland 500 years after the infamous time of the House of Borgia.
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It’s important to note that Switzerland has produced these things at least partially through the grace of the countries surrounding it.
Things would be very different in Switzerland if it bordered the Eastern Bloc or the Mediterranean Sea.