Barbarians Quotes - Page 7

• A strange lot this, to be dropped down in a world of barbarians - men who see clearly enough the barbarity of all ages except their own.

  Ernest Howard Crosby

  Men, Progress, Age

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• I've got a good Barbarians squad including Australian backs who have played together. Gavin Henson would make a fool of himself if he was way off the pace. Not having made a tackle or played a game for so long beforehand would be a disadvantage. It would be ideal if he has a couple of games first, but who with?

  Nick Mallett

  Couple, Squad, Games

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• Because Roman civilization perished through barbarian invasions, we are perhaps too much inclined to think that that is the only way a civilization can die. If the lights that guide us ever go out, they will fade little by little, as if of their own accord.... We therefore should not console ourselves by thinking that the barbarians are still a long way off. Some peoples may let the torch be snatched from their hands, but others stamp it out themselves.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Thinking, Light, Hands

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

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• Obama, who is becoming more and more preacher-like, wants to be the Punisher-in-Chi ef of the Western World, the Avenger-in-Chie f. There is something oddly Roman about him. ... The lesser races must be civilized and they must be punished... Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.

  Robert Fisk

  Race, World, Want

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• If I paint like a barbarian, it's because we live in a barbarous age

  Karel Appel

  Art, Age, Avant Garde

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• There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.

  Mark Twain

  Party, Civilization, Differences

  Mark Twain (1869). “The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress”, p.275

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• Man is born a barbarian, and only raises himself above the beast by culture.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Men, Culture, Beast

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• I was a barbarian, tender and full of violence. I translated by instinct, without any method, not merely an artistic truth but above all a human one.

  Maurice de Vlaminck

  Violence, Artistic, Instinct

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• How is it that in the so-called barbarian ages art was understood, whereas in our age of progress exactly the opposite is true?

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Art, Opposites, Understanding

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• That strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Missionary, Olaf, Strange

  1930 Last and First Men, ch.3.

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• The destruction that barbarians leave behind has a grim fascination, doesn't it? We're reminded how thin is the veneer of civilization.

  Dean Koontz

  Civilization, Fascination, Destruction

  Dean Koontz (2016). “The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd”, p.101, Bantam

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• Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Taken, Men, Done

  Walter Savage Landor (1846). “The Works of Walter Savage Landor”, p.487

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• The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States.

  Lord Acton

  Religious, Book, School

  Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom: Great Event”, p.29, VM eBooks

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• Proportion ... You can't help thinking about it in these London streets, where it doesn't exist ... It's like listening to a symphony of cats to walk along them. Senseless discords and a horrible disorder all the way ... We need no barbarians from outside; they're on the premises, all the time.

  Aldous Huxley

  Cat, Thinking, Symphony

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• The fundamental religion of most of mankind is the faith that God has revealed Himself to us and not to the barbarians. Our tribe is the one God chose and so if we vanquish the other tribes and rain fire and destruction on them, we're only carrying out God's Will.

  Garrison Keillor

  Rain, Fire, Religion

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• To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.

  William Godwin

  Mean, Punishment, Compulsion

  William Godwin (1798). “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness: By William Godwin”, p.373

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• Further strengthenings of the self-centered instinct for survival recruit even greater numbers of people into some sort of ring of fellowship (church or gender, red state or blue) by populating the terra incognita outside the ring with enough barbarians to verify the existence of a civilization within--to define the preferred stock by what, as all good people agree, it decidedly is not.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Civilization, Numbers, Blue

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• It is absurd to suppose, if this is God's world, that men must always be selfish barbarians.

  Charles Fletcher Dole

  Selfish, Men, World

  Charles Fletcher Dole (1897). “The Coming People”

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• Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.

  Herbert Spencer

  Revenge, Sacrifice, Men

  Herbert Spencer (1910). “Works: The study of sociology”

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• American authors or scientists are prone to consider the wealthy businessman as a barbarian, as a man exclusively intent upon making money.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Men, Making Money, Scientist

  Ludwig Von Mises (1978). “Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The”, p.20, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• And it's the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy.

  Helen Clark MacInnes

  Destruction, Worst, Educated

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• But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.

  Robert Graves

  Independent, Civilization, Long

  Robert Graves (2011). “The White Goddess”, p.361, Faber & Faber

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• The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life.

  Edward Gibbon

  Opportunity, History, Giving

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, with notes by Milman and Guizot. Ed. by W. Smith”, p.363

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• The barbarians of Germany had felt, and still dreaded, the arms of the young Caesar; his soldiers were the companions of his victory; the grateful provincials enjoyed the blessings of his reign; but the favourites, who had opposed his elevation, were offended by his virtues; and they justly considered the friend of the people as the enemy of the court.

  Edward Gibbon

  Grateful, Blessing, History

  Edward Gibbon (2008). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.396, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.

  Edward Gibbon

  Horse, Numbers, History

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.239

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