#barbarism

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it. ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #denunciation #evil #good #jews

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. ↗

— Georges Clemenceau

#barbarism #civilization #degeneration #directly #gone

Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos. ↗

— Edward Bellamy

#chaos #civilization #imagination

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#barbarism #customs #law #nature #self-centered

To deal with the true causes of war one must begin by recognizing as of prime relevancy to the solution of the problem the familiar fact that civilization is a partial, incomplete, and, to a great extent, superficial modification of barbarism. ↗

— Elihu Root

#begin #causes #civilization #deal #extent

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism. ↗

— David Hare

#civilization #tendency #towards #ultimate

If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology. ↗

— Clifford D. Simak

#based #civilization #continue #found #mankind

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#barbarism #be prepared #civilization #defend #force

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. ↗

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

#civilization #lamb #skin #which

Passion and courtesy are two polar opposite traits that serve to balance each other into a full-blooded whole. Without socialization, passion is a crude barbarian, and without passion, the elegant and polite are dead. Allow both passion and courtesy into your life in equal measure, and be complete. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#barbarism #civil #civilization #courtesy #manners