Savages Quotes - Page 22

• A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realisation of its desire.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Atheism, Desire, Crowds

  Gustave Le Bon (2012). “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind”, p.27, Courier Corporation

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• 'Savage' describes a cultural condition, not a degree of intelligence.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Degrees, Evolution, Conditions

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• It is useless saying that we do not accept the gods of the primitive world. In form, no; in essence, yes. The fact before us is that all ideas of gods can be traced to the earliest stages of human history.... There is an unbroken line of descent linking the gods of the most primitive peoples to those of modern man. We reject the world of the savage; but we still, in our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, perpetuate the theories he built upon that world.

  Chapman Cohen

  Men, Ideas, Essence

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• Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity.

  James G. Frazer

  Israel, Law, Atheism

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• I worship nothing. Not a good lie nor a dark one. If nature is proof of God's amazing creation then I have truly seen the light, and the light is black. Nature is genius at its most cruel and savage. No benevolent God could have come up with such an outrage.

  Gary Numan

  Lying, Dark, Light

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• There is no origin for the idea of an afterlife, save the conclusion which the savage draws from the notion suggested by dreams.

  Herbert Spencer

  Dream, Afterlife, Ideas

  Herbert Spencer (1910). “Passages from the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer”

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• The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.

  Edward Gibbon

  Rome, Europe, Curiosity

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

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• I said (to Daniel Jones), 'You realise I'm always going to be The Guy From Savage Garden'. He said, 'How do you think I feel? I'm The Other One From Savage Garden!'

  Darren Hayes

  Garden, Thinking, Guy

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• How amazing that the language of a few thousand savages living on a fog-encrusted island in the North Sea should become the language of the world.

  Norman St John-Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley

  Fog, Sea, Islands

  "The Scourge Of Teleprompters" by Jack Valenti, www.nytimes.com. July 10, 1984.

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• A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.

  Learned Hand

  Men, Checks, Possession

  Brainerd Currie, Learned Hand, United States. Supreme Court (1953). “The Supreme Court: an NBC radio discussion”

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• Music soothes my savage beast. I got a beast in me running wild.

  Dennis Rodman

  Running, Beast, Running Wild

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• The savage prays to a stone that he calls a god, while the Christian prays to a god he calls a spirit, and the prayers of both are equally useful.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Christian, Prayer, Stones

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.320, Library of Alexandria

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• Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. I've read that things inanimate have moved, and, as with living souls, have been inform'd, by magic numbers and persuasive sound.

  William Congreve

  Music, Rocks, Numbers

  William. II Congreve William Wycherley (John Vanbrugh and Farquhar George), William. II Wycherley, William Congreve, George Farquhar, John Vanbrugh (1840). “Dramatic Works with Biographical and Critical Notices by Leigh Hunt. - London, Moxon 1840”, p.237

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• Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada.

  Voltaire

  Play, Imagination, London

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• American fighters of the Pacific War were not heroes. The desperation of island combat included exchanged barbarities of which no one would willingly speak for a generation. On the American side, there were foul racism, vengeful refusals to take prisoners, a generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war.

  James Carroll

  War, Hero, Air

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• All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,--is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There and Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ohio, Cities, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.133, Bantam Classics

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• A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Hope, Women

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Culture, Behavior, Beauty”, p.97

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• We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Integrity, Bravery, What If

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.85, Xist Publishing

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• The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reality, Ideas, Might

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.189, Penguin

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• And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaininggross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Civilization, Dwelling

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.29, Graphic Arts Books

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• At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Selfish, Work

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.46, Library of America

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• When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Cutting, Government, Tree

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• A prince who loves and fears religion is a lion who stoops to the hand that strokes or to the voice that appeases him. He who fears and hates religion is like the savage beast that growls and bites the chain, which prevents his flying on the passenger. He who has no religion at all is that terrible animal who perceives his liberty only when he tears in pieces, and when he devours.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Hate, Animal, Hands

  Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, baron de, Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu (2005). “The Spirit of Laws”, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, "You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages". To that, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here". Believers who have the Gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.

  K.P. Yohannan

  Fall, Islands, Flames

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• We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of.

  Anton Chekhov

  Dog, Women, Heart

  Letter to E.M. Shavrova, September 16, 1891.

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