A Quote by Will Durant

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

Will Durant

Quote Topics

Barbarism Century Civilization Day Needs Requires

Quote Author

Will Durant
American - Historian
November 5, 1885 - November 7, 1981

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

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

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

David Hare

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Libraries are the thin red line between civilization and barbarism.

Neil Gaiman

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

Bill Kristol

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

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

Neil Gaiman

Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.

Frederick Douglass

Extremes produce reaction. Beware that our boasted civilization does not lapse into barbarism.

Antoine Rivarol

Christianity has carried civilization along with it, whithersoever it has gone; and, as if to show that the latter does not depend on physical causes, some of the countries the most civilized in the day's of Augustus are now in a state of hopeless barbarism.