Notable Quotable 171

Dec 26, 2023

Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, “Long live the King!” The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.

- Étienne de La Boétie

The central question is whether the wonderfully diverse and gifted assemblage of human beings on this earth really knows how to run a civilization.

- Adlai Stevenson

You can’t say that civilization don’t advance, for in every war they kill you a new way.

- Will Rogers

If we are to preserve civilization, we must first remain civilized.

- Louis St. Laurent

We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery.

- Bertrand De Jouvenel

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Murderous, mutual loathing between tribes was no more explicable, or complicated, then the genocidal urges of chimpanzees—a fact of nature that we humans, vainly and disingenuously, pretend our codes of civilization transcend.

- Alan Weisman

There is an undercurrent of savagery in the human psyche. Anyone who forgets this and doesn’t guard against it, risks being swept away by it.

- Lance Conrad, The Price of Nobility

Man's savagery is unmatched. Compared to his savagery, the cruelty of the animal world looks almost benign.

- Krishna Murthy

Consistent inhumanity is the sign of savagery.

- Abhijit Naskar, Revolution Indomable

He had very few doubts, and when the facts contradicted his views on life, he shut his eyes in disapproval.

- Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse