A Quote by David Hare

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

David Hare

Quote Topics

Barbarism Civilization Tendency Towards Ultimate

Quote Author

David Hare
English - Playwright
Born: June 5, 1947

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

Will Durant

Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization.

Rosa Luxemburg

Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism.

John Derbyshire

Barbarism recommences by the excess of civilization.

Alphonse de Lamartine

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.

C. S. Lewis

We have progressed in a technological sense, but I'm not so sure whether we have progressed in a civilizational matter - the quality of the civilization has not improved. It's a civilization that's in love with technology but forgetting about the human side of it and the destructive tendency in human civilization has not been faced.

Laszlo Nemes

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Patriotism is an indispensable weapon in the defense of civilization against barbarism.

Bill Kristol

Libraries are the thin red line between civilization and barbarism.

Neil Gaiman

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Oscar Wilde

Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.

Mercedes Lackey

The tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions.

George Eliot

In mathematics ... we find two tendencies present. On the one hand, the tendency towards abstraction seeks to crystallise the logical relations inherent in the maze of materials ... being studied, and to correlate the material in a systematic and orderly manner. On the other hand, the tendency towards intuitive understanding fosters a more immediate grasp of the objects one studies, a live rapport with them, so to speak, which stresses the concrete meaning of their relations.