Barbarians Quotes - Page 3

• Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.

  George Santayana

  Change, Children, Persistence

  George Santayana (2011). “The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense”, p.172, MIT Press

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• The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

  John Shelby Spong

  Sacrifice, Views, Ideas

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• When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect the rule you are breaking. If you have never heard of the rules you are breaking, you have no right to do so, and you are likely to come off like a buffoon or a barbarian. Breaking rules, using slang and archaic language can be effective, but it is just as likely to give you an audience busy with wincing.

  N.D. Wilson

  Giving, Creative, Lapses

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• Your insult has offended me. If we were at the Peaks, we would have to duel in traditional alil'tiki'i fashion." "Which is what?" Teft asked. "With spears?" Rock laughed. "No, no. We upon the Peaks are not barbarians like you down here." "How then?" Kaladin asked, genuinely curious. "Well," Rock said, "is involving much mudbeer and singing." “How's that a duel?” "He who can still sing after the most drinks is winner. Plus, soon' everyone is so drunk that they forget what argument was about." Teft laughed. "Beats knives at dawn, I suppose.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Fashion, Rocks, Knives

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• But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.

  Edward Gibbon

  Army, Discipline, History

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.93, Modern Library

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• I didn't know how to be any other way. I felt like one of those barbarian kings just coming to conquer the Roman Empire.

  Mike Tyson

  Kings, Boxing, Empires

  "Tyson reflects on life as the 'baddest man on the planet'" by Anushka Asthana, www.theguardian.com. May 18, 2008.

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• If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.

  Edward Gibbon

  Loss, Rome, History

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.42

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• Only in the Roman Empire and in Spain under Arab domination has culture been a potent factor. Under the Arab, the standard attained was wholly admirable; to Spain flocked the greatest scientists, thinkers, astronomers, and mathematicians of the world, and side by side there flourished a spirit of sweet human tolerance and a sense of purist chivalry. Then with the advent of Christianity, came the barbarians.

  Adolf Hitler

  Sweet, Tolerance, World

  "Hitler's secret Conversations". Book by H R Trevor-Roper, p. 542, 1953.

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• One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.

  J. William Fulbright

  Trying, Damage, Violence

  "The arrogance of power". Book by J. William Fulbright, 1966.

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• They wanted to carry her, but she jumped to the stones of the plaza and strode away from the building, toward her ranks, which parted to make way for her. The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wrists, followed by her generals and ministers, walked the barbarian Princess with her book and her sword.

  Neal Stephenson

  Book, Princess, Simple

  Neal Stephenson (1998). “The Diamond Age”, p.468, Penguin UK

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• when night came on, the Macedonians and the barbarian crowd suddenly took fright in one of those mysterious panics to which great armies are liable

  Thucydides

  Army, Night, Crowds

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.291, Simon and Schuster

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• Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians; since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.

  Edward Gibbon

  Europe, Conquer, Secure

  Edward Gibbon (1826). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.511

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• When I'm out on a long run," she continued, "the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going blehblehbleh all the time. Everything quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow. It's jus time and the movement and the motion.That's what love--just being a barbarian, running through the woods.

  Christopher McDougall

  Running, Things In Life, Long

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• People who type with their iPhones on loud are barbarians and probably killers.

  Nicole Richie

  Iphone, People, Killers

  Twitter post from May 16, 2013

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• So when I open the door on Halloween, I am confronted by three or four imaginary heroes, such as G.I. Joe, Conan the Barbarian and Oliver North, who would look very terrifying except that they are three feet tall and facing in random directions. They stand there silently for several seconds before an adult voice hisses from the darkness behind them: "Say 'Trick or treat!

  Dave Barry

  Halloween, Hero, Doors

  Dave Barry (1994). “The World According to Dave Barry”, Outlet

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• We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.

  Bertolt Brecht

  War, Government, People

  Bertolt Brecht (1998). “Collected Stories”, Arcade Pub

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• These, then, are the four kinds of royalty. First the monarchy of the heroic ages; this was exercised over voluntary subjects, but limited to certain functions; the king was a general and a judge, and had the control of religion The second is that of the barbarians, which is a hereditary despotic government in accordance with law. A third is the power of the so-called Aesynmete or Dictator; this is an elective tyranny. The fourth is the Lacedaemonian, which is in fact a generalship, hereditary and perpetual.

  Aristotle

  Kings, Government, Law

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.3028, Delphi Classics

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• Every person - whether Greek or Barbarian - who is in training for wisdom, leading a blameless, irreproachable life, chooses neither to commit injustice nor return it unto others, but to avoid the company of busybodies, and hold in contempt the places where they spend their time - courts, councils, marketplaces, assemblies - in short, every kind of meeting or reunion of thoughtless people. ... People such as these, who find their joy in virtue, celebrate a festival their whole life long.

  Pierre Hadot

  Long, People, Joy

  "La Philosophie comme manière de vivre: Entretiens avec Jeannie Carlier et Arnold I. Davidson" by Pierre Hadot, Jeannie Carlier, Arnold I. Davidson, Paris: Albin Michel, translated by Michael Chase, (p. 264), 2001.

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• Some mothers in today's world feel "cumbered" by home duties and are thus attracted by other more "romantic" challenges. Such women could make the same error of perspective that Martha made. The woman, for instance, who deserts the cradle in order to help defend civilization against the barbarians may well later meet, among the barbarians, her own neglected child.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Mother, Children, Home

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• Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.

  Robert Fisk

  Empires, Punisher, Terrorist

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• Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was inner go. Rome’s life was now an imitation of life: a mere holding on. Security was the watchword – as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks

  Lewis Mumford

  Responsibility, Rome, Long

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• Every virile people has established colonial power. All great nations in the fullness of their strength have desired to set their mark upon barbarian lands and those who fail to participate in this great rivalry will play a pitiable role in time to come.

  Heinrich von Treitschke

  Land, Play, People

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• The Barbarian Way was, in some sense, trying to create a volatile fuel to get people to step out and act. It's pretty hard to get a whole group of people moving together as individuals who are stepping into a more mystical, faith-oriented, dynamic kind of experience with Christ. So, I think Barbarian Way was my attempt to say, "Look, underneath what looks like invention, innovation and creativity is really a core mysticism that hears from God, and what is fueling this is something really ancient." That's what was really the core of The Barbarian Way.

  Erwin McManus

  Moving, Creativity, Thinking

  "In That Smoky Room". RELEVANT Magazine Interview, relevantmagazine.com. September 23, 2005.

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• My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.

  Pat Conroy

  Mother, Children, Father

  Pat Conroy (2016). “A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life”, p.144, Nan A. Talese

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• Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.

  Kathleen Parker

  Children, Islands, Adults

  "Lord of the blogs". townhall.com. December 28, 2005.

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