Barbarous Quotes

We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die or hunger.
The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman. ~ Vladimir Lenin

At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God's own heart? ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Numa turned his attention to domestic matters. The removal of all danger from without would induce his subjects to luxuriate in idleness, as they would be no longer restrained by the fear of an enemy or by military discipline. To prevent this, he strove to inculcate in their minds the fear of the gods, regarding this as the most powerful influence which could act upon an uncivilised and, in those ages, a barbarous people. ~ Livy

It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors. ~ David Hume

I think that sacrifices of animals in the name of religion are barbarous and they degrade the name of religion. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

They did not understand that war, which trained courage and founded the cities of barbarous and ignorant men, brings to victor himself but ruin and misery, and is nothing but a horrible and stupid crime when nations are united together by common bonds of art, science, and trade. ~ Anatole France

There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of the ancient classics. Take any one of them into your hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel yourself refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened; just as if you had quenched your thirst at some pure spring. Is this the effect of the old language and its perfect expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of a thousand years? Perhaps both together. But this I know. If the threatened calamity should ever come, and the ancient languages cease to be taught, a new literature shall arise, of such barbarous, shallow and worthless stuff as never was seen before. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more ... But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense. ~ John Dryden

Whereas, Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable War of one portion of its citizens upon another portion; the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination; in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence: ~ John Brown

I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth. ~ Herman Melville

we should also consider the remoter analogy of the animals. Many birds and animals, especially the carnivorous, have only one mate, and the love and care of offspring which seems to be natural is inconsistent with the primitive theory of marriage. If we go back to an imaginary state in which men were almost animals and the companions of them, we have as much right to argue from what is animal to what is human as from the barbarous to the civilized man. The record of animal life on the globe is fragmentary, - the connecting links are wanting and cannot be supplied; the record of social life is still more fragmentary and precarious. Even if we admit that our first ancestors had no such institution as marriage, still the stages by which men passed from outer barbarism to the comparative civilization of China, Assyria, and Greece, or even of the ancient Germans, are wholly unknown to us. Such ~ Plato

Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time.
Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There is this other thought that he has overcome the world by the gift of the Holy Spirit. That gift was practically the world's conquest. Jesus has set up a rival kingdom now: a kingdom of love and righteousness; already the world feels its power by the Spirit. I do not believe that there is a dark place in the centre of Africa which is not to some extent improved by the influence of Christianity; even the wilderness rejoices and is glad for him. No barbarous power dares to do what it once did, or if it does there is such a clamour raised against its cruelty that very soon it has to say peccavi, [I have sinned] and confess its faults. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices. ~ William Hazlitt

There is no such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and constitute even the rudest of society, self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support ... ~ Edward Bellamy

The expedition for the occupation of the Marquesas had sailed from Brest in the spring of 1842, and the secret of its destination was solely in the possession of its commander. No wonder that those who contemplated such a signal infraction of the rights of humanity should have sought to veil the enormity from the eyes of the world. And yet, notwithstanding their iniquitous conduct in this and in other matters, the French have ever plumed themselves upon being the most humane and polished of nations. A high degree of refinement, however, does not seem to subdue our wicked propensities so much after all; and were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged. One ~ Herman Melville

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness. ~ John Muir

What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom! ~ Anton Chekhov

The Indians , whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us. ~ John Locke

Their Policy in this is very wise, and has nothing Barbarous in it. For, since their preservation depends upon their union, and since it is hardly possible that among peoples where license reigns with all impunity -- and, above all, among young people -- there should not happen some event capable of causing a rupture, and disuniting their minds, -- for these reasons, they hold every year a general assembly in Onnontaé. There all the Deputies from the different Nations are present, to make their complaints and receive the necessary satisfaction in mutual gifts, -- by means of which they maintain a good understanding with one another ~ Reuben Gold Thwaites

Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers. ~ G.K. Chesterton

But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long words where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything out-right barbarous. These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article. ~ George Orwell

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I am certain one ought to be allowed to undo what one has done so ignorantly ! I daresay it happens to lots of women; only they submit, and I kick.... When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times that we have the unhappiness to live in, what will they say! ~ Thomas Hardy

You are taken, shaken, by moments when the improbability of our lives comes over you like a fever. Everything is remarkable, people, living, events present themselves to you with the immediacy of players in some barbarous and splendid drama that it seems we are part of. You have been given new eyes. ~ Doris Lessing

How vainly shall we endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punishment of the poorer class of criminals so long as children are reared in the brutalizing influences of poverty, so long as the bite of want drives men to crime. ~ Henry George

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

As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle. ~ William Godwin

When he really wanted to get juicy, he would write in Latin. Remember? I was seventeen before I realised that immissio penis in os meant sticking it in the mouth."
"And immissio penis in anum, those who practiced that, he called us moral imbeciles and moral depravities, certain barbarous races devoid of morality. I grew up in constant fear! ~ Larry Kramer

The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live - that is, keep comfortably warm - and die in New England at last. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Every beggar shall be arrested. But to arrest a beggar merely in order to put him in jail would be barbarous and absurd. He should be arrested for the sole purpose of teaching him how to earn a living by his work. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

For indeed, what is more dire than the evils which today afflict the world? What is more terrible for the discerning than the unfolding events? What is more pitiable and frightening for those who endure them? To see a barbarous people of the desert overrunning another's lands as though they were their own; to see civilization itself being ravaged by wild and untamed beasts whose form alone is human. ~ Maximus The Confessor

It is inconceivable that Homo Sapiens could last another thousand years in present form. People of such great stupidity and such barbarous manners. And what do years mean, apart from human measurement and perception? Does time pass if there is no one there to register its passing? Of course not, since Time is a figment of human perception. ~ William S. Burroughs

America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay. ~ Cormac McCarthy

HIERONIMO. O eyes! no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;
O life! no life, but lively form of death
O world! no world, but mass of public wrongs,
Confus'd and fill'd with murder and misdeeds!
O sacred heav'ns! if this unhallowed deed,
If this inhuman and barbarous attempt,
If this incomparable murder thus
Of mine, but now no more my son,
Shall unreveal'd and unreveng'd pass,
How should we term your dealings to be just,
If you unjustly deal with those that in your justice trust? ~ Thomas Kyd

Together, leading the world, the U.S.A. will rid our planet of this barbarous organization called ISIS. ~ Bernie Sanders

An absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' ... the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE ... The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

One of its sources [Leaf by Niggle] was a great-limbed poplar tree that I could see even lying in bed. It was suddenly lopped and mutilated by its owner, I do not know why. It is cut down now, a less barbarous punishment for any crimes it might have been accused of, such as being large and alive. I do not think it had any friends, or any mourners, except myself and a pair of owls. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

It clearly appears that there are no races in the world, however rude, uncultivated, barbarous, gross, or almost brutal they may be, who cannot be persuaded and brought to a good order and way of life, and made domestic, mild and tractable, provided ... the method that is proper and natural to men is used; that is, love and gentleness and kindness. ~ Bartolome De Las Casas

The manner of their living is very barbarous, because they do not eat at fixed times, but as often as they please ~ Amerigo Vespucci

War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values. ~ Cesare Pavese

How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend, for the peroration is beginning, you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very blessings of civilisation. What is you excuse? it is all very well for you to say, pointing to the streets and squares and forests of the globe swarming with black and white and coffee-coloured inhabitants, all busily engaged in traffic and enterprise and love-making, we have had other work on our hands. Without our doing, those seas would be unsailed and those fertile lands a desert. We have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that, allowing that some had help, takes time.
There is truth in what you say - I will not deny it. But at the same time may I remind you that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1886; that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by the law to possess her own property; and that in 1919 - which is a whole nine years ago - she was given a vote? May I also remin ~ Virginia Woolf

There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other. ~ Clarence Darrow

In consequence of this perversion of the word Being, philosophers looking about for something to supply its place, laid their hands upon the word Entity, a piece of barbarous Latin, invented by the schoolmen to be used as an abstract name, in which class its grammatical form would seem to place it: but being seized by logicians in distress to stop a leak in their terminology, it has ever since been used as a concrete name. ~ John Stuart Mill

The idea of humanity becomes more and more of a power in the civilized world, and, owing to the expansion and increasing speed of means of communication, and also owing to the influence, still more material than moral, of civilization upon barbarous peoples, this idea of humanity begins to take hold even of the minds of uncivilized nations. This idea is the invisible power of our century, with which the present powers - the States - must reckon. They cannot submit to it of their own free will because such submission on their part would be equivalent to suicide, since the triumph of humanity can be realized only through the destruction of the States. But the States can no longer deny this idea nor openly rebel against it, for having now grown too strong, it may finally destroy them.

In the face of this fainful alternative there remains only one way out: and that is hypocrisy. The States pay their outward respects to this idea of humanity; they speak and apparently act only in the name of it, but they violate it every day. This, however, should not be held against the States. They cannot act otherwise, their position having become such that they can hold their own only by lying. Diplomacy has no other mission.

Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war upon another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that right and justice are o ~ Mikhail Bakunin

Wars of aggression are the most barbarous of all human endeavors and are, more often than not, the instruments of insane tyrants who hear voices. ~ Rodrigue Tremblay

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors ... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! ~ Frederick Douglass

Treacherous assassins, enemies of the people, and worthy of everyone's ridicule are those who, under the pretext of guiding future generations, teach them an isolated system of doctrines and whisper in their ear (instead of the sweet message of love) the barbarous gospel of hate. ~ Jose Marti

Can anything be more grotesque and barbarous than our 'florists' bouquets,' a series of concentric rings of flowers of divers colours, bordered by maidenhair and a piece of stiff lace paper, in which stems, leaves, and even petals are brutally crushed, and the grace and individuality of each flower systematically destroyed? ~ Isabella Bird

Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence. ~ Joseph Story

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. ~ George Orwell

Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare. ~ Horace Walpole

No. I've always been drawn to broken, wild terrain. The oddest tongues come from such places, and the strangest mythologies, and the oldest cities, and the most barbarous religions ~ Donna Tartt

He tried to picture her in battle, covered in gore and swinging a blade - would she be silent and barbarous or would she flit through the fray, making sarcastic comments as she casually dealt deathblows? ~ Bethany K. Lovell

No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right. ~ William Borah

But when the class that monopolizes wealth and arms embodies its power in a centralized bureaucracy and an irresistible standing army, we get a despotism in its worst form - namely, a barbarous and primitive system of government that has the instruments of an advanced civilization at its disposal, a yoke of iron which is applied by rough and reckless hands and which is very hard to break, since it has been steeled and tempered by practical artisans. ~ Gaetano Mosca

...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous? ~ Marquis De Sade

[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as ... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. ~ John Milton

The Tower of Babel" ...
The undersigned citizens, being artists, painters, sculptors, architects, and others devoted to and desirous preserving the amenities of Paris, wish to protest, in the name of our national good taste, against such an erection in the very heart of our city, as the monstrous and useless Eiffel Tower, already christened ... " The Tower of Babel" ...
How much longer is the City of Paris to be a play-ground for these barbarous and sordid imaginations which disfigure and dishonor her? For the Eiffel Tower, which even commercially minded America rejected, is a public dishonor to our city. All our historic buildings, our monuments of rare and appealing beauty, are dwarfed and humiliated by this monstrous apotheosis of the factory chimney whose odious shadow will lie over the city ...
Plea to the Exposition Director in opposition to the Eiffel Tower, signed by artists and writers and published in Le Temps, 1887 ~ Carol McCleary

Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of everyone. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. ~ William James

It is indeed strange that with all the knowledge we have gained in the past hundred years we preserve and practice the methods of an ancient and barbarous world in our dealing with crime. So long as this is observed and exercised there can be no change except to heap more cruelties and more wretchedness upon those who are the victims of our foolish system. ~ Clarence Darrow

Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves, where manners ne'er were preached. ~ William Shakespeare

If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a "barbarous relic," one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English - and not Danish, German, or French - is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

By the middle twentieth century, few European nation-states had not at one time or another figured themselves as 'the outpost of Western Christian civilisation': France, imperial Germany, the Habsburg Reich, Poland with its self-image as przedmurze (bastion), even tsarist Russia. Each of these nation-state myths identified "barbarism" as the condition or ethic of their immediate eastward neighbour: for the French, the Germans were barbarous, for the Germans it was the Slavs, for the Poles the Russians, for the Russians the Mongol and Turkic peoples of Central Asia and eventually the Chinese. ~ Neal Ascherson

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy," Burke wrote in the Reflections, "which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors. . . . In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth."58 ~ Yuval Levin

What should we suppose must naturally be the consequence of our carrying on a slave trade with Africa? With a country, vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Does any one suppose a slave trade would help their civilization? ~ William Wilberforce

Ah,' said Loder, meaning by this that he regretted the turtle and the geese, that he thought Fox's refusal for his colleagues an abuse of authority, and that he for one dissociated himself from the barbarous incivility: a considerable burden for a single 'ah', but one that it bore easily. ~ Patrick O'Brian

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another....
Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give your harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made you, nor that the claimants
We ~ William Shakespeare

Accordingly, Herodotus showed keen interest in understanding Persian politics, while Sima Qian was very concerned about the culture and religion of barbarous steppe people. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

After weaning the indigenous people's of Egypt: 'from their miserable and barbarous manners, [Osiris] taught them how to till the earth, and how to sow and reap crops, he formulated a code of laws for them, and made them worship the gods and perform service to them. He then left Egypt and traveled over the rest of the world teaching the various nations to do what his own subjects were doing. He forced no man to carry out his instructions, but by means of gentle persuasion and an appeal to their reason, he succeeded in inducing them to practice what he preached. ~ Graham Hancock

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. ~ Albert Camus

I am puzzled by people today who, after moralizing about the need for cooperation and goodwill and love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself, suddenly invoke the most primitive, barbarous motivations for any kind of progress. ~ Murray Bookchin

Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains; and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions. ~ Herman Melville

I could not fight the Nazis in the present, as they had the power to still my voice, so I decided to fight them in the future. I would give the coming generations a weapon against any resurgence of such evil. My eyewitness account would record the barbarous acts, and also show the way to stop them. ~ Friedrich Kellner

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the Stooks arise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behavior Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies? ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

God, who knows our most secret thoughts and who sees all, is witness to the purity of my principles. They are not founded on this barbarous ferocity that takes pleasure in shedding human blood. ~ Toussaint Louverture

But capital not only lives upon labour. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises. ~ Karl Marx

Tom Paine generally took a critical stance when dealing with religion and the church, but in 1775, in an essay entitled, "Thoughts on Defensive War" he wrote as follows: "In the barbarous ages of the world, men in genernal had no liberty. the strong governed the weak a will; till the coming of Christ there was no sucht thing as political freedom in any part of the world... The Romans held the world in slavery and were themselves slaves of their emperors... Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ ~ Edmund A. Opitz

The practice of all ages and all countries (whether Christian or heathen, polite or barbarous) hath been ... to do honour to those who are invested with public authority. ~ Francis Atterbury

And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen. ~ James Joyce

In addition, historical interpretations of this period in China have been shaped by Karl Marx's writings on this subject. Despite his anti-imperialist stance, Marx often uses racist expressions, such as "barbarous"and "hereditary stupidity," to describe Chinese culture and people. ~ Tonglin Lu

The difference between a civilized man and a barbarous fiend - a madman, say - Lies, perhaps, Merely in a thin veneer of willed self-restraint. ~ Margaret Atwood

The fear of death has been raised too much and set up on high, especially by preachers, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness over the heads of the Israelites; but not with so good excuse as that symbol had, for this fear has not been curative, I think, nor made into pleasant or graceful shape, but rather a horrid spectacle, to affright people. For that men can be frightened into piety has been one of the legacies of religion which barbarous ages have bequeathed us plentifully. ~ James Vila Blake

The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous. ~ Thomas Paine

You'll find in Africans a fantastic amount of heavy space opera and so on, going on ... which makes the colored African very, very interesting to process because he doesn't know why he goes through all these dances ... and why he feels so barbarous ... ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Glanton was first to reach the dying man and he knelt with that alien and barbarous head cradled between his thighs like some reeking outland nurse and dared off the savages with his revolver. They circled on the plain and shook their bows and lofted a few arrows at him and then turned and rode on. Blood bubbled from the man's chest and he turned his lost eyes upward, already glazed, the capillaries breaking up. In those dark pools there sat each a small and perfect sun. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority. ~ John Adams

Justice is the foremost virtue of the civilizing races. It subdues the barbarous nations, while injustice arouses the weakest. ~ Jose Rizal

I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

What are the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism is a sin. ~ Thomas Huxley

Man does not necessarily begin with despotism because he is barbarous, but very often finds his way to despotism because he is civilised. He finds it because he is experienced; or, what is often much the same thing, because he is exhausted ~ G.K. Chesterton

The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world ~ Stendhal

A harrassed and dubious childhood under the hand of a well-meaning but barbarous mother's help from County Armagh led me to think of the North of Ireland as prison and the South as a land of escape. ~ Louis MacNeice

It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon. ~ Matsuo Basho

The horrors of the Middle Ages were really nonexistent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present-day life as something far more than horrible, far more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilization. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, every one does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche's had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today. ~ Hermann Hesse

I have no hobby. As far as my activities beyond the bounds of my recognized profession are concerned, I take them all, without exception, very seriously. So much so, that I should be horrified by the idea that they had anything to do with hobbies - preoccupations in which I had become mindlessly infatuated in order to kill the time - had I not become hardened by experience to such examples of this now widespread, barbarous mentality. ~ Theodor W. Adorno

What is most mortifying of all is that it is chance - simply a barbarous, lagging chance. That is what is mortifying! Five minutes, only five minutes too late! Had I come five minutes earlier, the moment would have passed away like a cloud, and it would never have entered her head again. And it would have ended by her understanding it all. But now again empty rooms, and me alone. Here the pendulum is ticking; it does not care, it has no pity... There is no one - that's the misery of it! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And that discovery would betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture to the laughter of the world. For we moderns have nothing of our own. We only become worth notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and sciences: we are wandering encyclopaedias, as an ancient Greek who had strayed into our time would probably call us. But the only value of an encyclopaedia lies in the inside, in the contents, not in what is written outside, in the binding or the wrapper. And so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints something like this on the cover: "Manual of internal culture for external barbarians." The opposition of inner and outer makes the outer side still more barbarous, as it would naturally be, when the outward growth of a rude people merely developed its primitive inner needs. For what means has nature of repressing too great a luxuriance from without? Only one, - to be affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And so we have the custom of no longer taking real things seriously, we get the feeble personality on which the real and the permanent make so little impression. Men become at last more careless and accommodating in external matters, and the [Pg 34] considerable cleft between substance and form is widened; until they have no longer any feeling for barbarism, if only their memories be kept continually titillated, and there f ~ Friedrich Nietzsche