Barbarians quotes
71 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"It is the decisive people who have become civilised; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians."
"War is the business of barbarians."
"To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian."
"Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians, who find it less trouble to provide a new, cheap, and shoddy thing than to get the full use and full pleasure out of a finely-made and carefully-chosen old one."
"The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century."
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"We are all youthful barbarians, and only our new toys bring us excitement. That has been the sole purpose of our flights. This one flies higher, that one faster. But now we will make ourselves at home. We will forget the machine, the tool. It is no longer complex; it does what it is supposed to do, unnoticed. And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet."
"Anyone happy in this age and place Is daft or corrupt. Better to abdicate From a material and spiritual terrain Fit only for barbarians."
"Man is born a barbarian, and only raises himself above the beast by culture."
"You barbarians!' he yelled. 'I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until...until you've had enough.' Ford was running after him. Very very fast. 'And then I will do it again!' yelled Arthur, 'And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!"
"[O]ne person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing."
"War,--the trade of barbarians!"
"The noble caste was in the beginning always the barbarian caste: their superiority lay, not in their physical strength, but primarily in their psychical - they were more complete human beings."
"Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened."
"Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement."
