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Savagery Quotes

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Savagery Quotes

“The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.”

ChristianityConversionSavagesSavagery
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”

DoeWarDreamReligionNaturalMoralCrimeExampleMoralityCivilizationEthicsWeakAidsSignificantConclusionOur TimeOur DreamsMaintainingWarrantsSavageryMoral Life
Book:The Lessons of History
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“If one takes full account of the persecution of heretics, the frequency and savagery of the religious wars which Christianity had endangered, the harm caused, especially to children, by the pernicious doctrine of original sin, a case could be made for saying that the world would have been better off without Christianity.”

IfsWorldChildrenHas BeensMadeWarEvilReligiousSinChristianityCasesAccountsOriginalsHarmDoctrinePersecutionBetter OffFrequencyHereticPerniciousOriginal SinSavageryReligious Wars
Author:A.J. Ayer
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“If anything qualifies as an irony of history it would be this: that Marx and Engels throughout the nineteenth century wrote about America the United States as the great country of the future, of freedom and equality and a good life for the working man, and a country of revolution and emancipation, and of Russia as the great country of despotism, backwardness, savagery and superstition.”

IfsMenCountryStatesWould BeAmericaUnitedUnited StatesCenturyRevolutionRussiaIronyGood LifeSuperstitionsNineteenth CenturyDespotismEmancipationGreat CountrySavageryWorking ManEngelsFreedom And Equality
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“As for the primitive, I hark back to it because we are still very primitive. How many thousands of years of culture, think you, have rubbed and polished at our raw edges? One probably; at the best, no more than two. And that takes us back to screaming savagery, when, gross of body and deed, we drank blood from the skulls of our enemies, and hailed as highest paradise the orgies and carnage of Valhalla.”

ThinkingYearsStillsTwoBodyCultureEnemyBloodHighestEdgesDeedsParadisePrimitiveTattooGrossDrankSkullsPolishedSavageryCarnageValhalla
Author:Jack London
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“It takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the coalition is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement. The war itself is the American war crime.”

PeopleWarMatterPoliticalImaginationCitiesViolenceCrimeHorrorBattleWeaponsDestructionDistanceSoldierHeavyCommitAcknowledgeHeatBombsVillageEngagementSteadyOccasionalMissilesCoalitionsSavageryBarbaricWar CrimesArtilleryAmerican WarRules Of Engagement
Author:James Carroll
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“Those who want their rights respected under the Constitution and the law ought to set the example themselves of observing the Constitution and the law. While there may be those of high intelligence who violate the law at times, the barbarian and the defective always violate it. Those who disregard the rules of society are not exhibiting a superior intelligence, are not promoting freedom and independence, are not following the path of civilization, but are displaying the traits of ignorance, of servitude, of savagery, and treading the way that leads back to the jungle.”

WayWantMayLawPathRightsExampleIgnoranceOughtCivilizationConstitutionIndependenceFollowingSuperiorsTraitsJunglePromotingObservingDisregardBarbariansServitudeDefectiveSavageryTreadingSuperior Intelligence
Author:Calvin Coolidge
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“But perhaps the most important difference between conservatives and liberals can be found in the area of national security. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban.”

ImportantWarStatesMightWantedFoundUnderstandingDifferencesUnitedUnited StatesSawsSecurityMilitaryOffersAreasPreparedTherapyNational SecurityTalibanSavageryIndictmentUnited States Military
Author:Karl Rove
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“Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside the twentieth century, the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic powers of signs and exorcisms . . . movie stars to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery!”

PeopleMenBelieveStillsUseHomeStarsCitiesMillionsDarknessMagicCenturyIgnoranceGeniusHundredMediumsPilotsMechanismReservesElectricityMovie StarMiraculousTwentieth CenturyPeasantsSweatersSavagerySkyscraperAviatorExorcismAmuletsMagic Powers
Author:Leon Trotsky
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“Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

PeopleThinkingWayYearsBodyVoiceNaturalCommonBehindsWrittenPoetBirthMassForgottenTongueOutcomesSolitaryMasterpieceJaneAustenSavageryTamedEliotForerunnersBronteChaucerMarlowe
Book:A Room of One's Own
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“The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to which civilization and philosophy has painfully struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery.”

MenLittlesPhilosophyCivilizationConvincedIgnorantDesertPyramidsSavageryChapelParishApex
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“I think that the real tragedy of Greece - aside of the savagery of European bureaucracy, Brussels bureaucracy and northern banks, which was really savage - is that the Greek crisis didn't have to erupt. It could have been taken care of pretty easily at the very beginning. But it happened and Syriza came into office with a declared commitment to combat it, and in fact as I recall they actually called a referendum, which horrified Europe.”

ThinkingHas BeensRealFactsCareTakenHappenedOfficeCommitmentEuropeTragedyCrisisGreekCombatRecallsSavagesBureaucracyCould Have BeenGreeceSavageryReferendumsBrussels
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“What I tried to show is that this idea of this fundamental conflict between savagery and civilization goes back to the very beginnings of Western history. I go back to the Greeks, I go back to the Romans. You can read Homer. And of course Homer has his great heroes involved in this myth, this wonderful mythic contest with savage tribal peoples, half-human monsters on distant parts of the world.”

WorldWonderfulHeroConflictWesternMythGreekSavagery
Author:Robert A. Williams, Jr.
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“Savagery was a word that Westerners used to, again, to consciously differentiate them from non-Westerners, to assert that superiority, that cultural superiority. It goes back to the British Empire, and again, you know, what was the purpose of the British Empire? To bring civilization to the savage no matter where they were, whether it was India or Asia or Australia or whatever. It's that civilizing mission that characterizes so much of the history of Western colonialism.”

PurposeWesternSuperiorityBritish EmpireSavagery
Author:Robert A. Williams, Jr.
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“What this ideology, what this myth about savagery did was really excuse America for the disappearance of the Indian. It wasn't our fault. They were just an inferior race. And so John Marshall adopts that. And the tragedy and the present-day circumstances of that decision are that those racial attitudes are so deeply embedded in these foundational principles of American Indian law.”

DecisionAttitudeCircumstancesTragedyExcuseMythIdeologyEmbeddedAmerican IndianSavagery
Author:Robert A. Williams, Jr.
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“Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.”

WorldWarBodyJusticeCuttingGoes OnCleanCancerGermanyGreat WarCancer SurvivorSavagery
Book:Newer Roosevelt messages: speeches, letters and magazine articles dealing with the war, before and after, and other vital topics
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“Television is the Antichrist, and I can assure you after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to medieval savagery and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb...it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything and a lousy joke at that.”

PeopleKnowsWorldHumansI CanStatesDiesThreeResultsKnow HowFourGenerationsTelevisionReturnLaughterJokesErasBombsOur WorldMedievalFartAntichristBanalitySavagerySlugsImbecilityFour Generations
Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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“Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite to whom? The Romans were foreigners writing for foreigners two millenniums ago; and for people whose gods we find quaint, whose savagery we abominate, whose private habits we don't like to talk about, but whose idea of what is exquisite is, we flatter ourselves, mysteriously identical to ours.”

PeopleWritingTwoIdeasFeelingsLinesReadyHabitProtestPerilIdenticalForeignersExquisiteScholarshipSavageryQuaint
Book:The Invention of Love
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“And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.”

LoveHumansDoeAgeDiesSpeakKindnessGreatnessGoodnessIncrediblesTinyBurningTortureMidstWarmthSparksDreamerHeroismDecayOddsThreadMartyrdomSavageryQuenchWhimsical
Author:Eldridge Cleaver
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“Jane Gallagher had wanted to know what time it was, but for some reason Holden Caulfield hadn't wanted Stradlater to tell her. When Stradlater refused to tell Holden Caulfield whether or not he had told Jane Gallagher what time it was, Holden Caulfield became enraged and attacked him in a fit or horological savagery, possibly because he was mentally ill and hated anyone byt him knowing what time it was.”

KnowsReasonWantedKnowingFitIllHatedJaneSavageryMentally IllHoldenHolden CaulfieldGallagher
Author:Frank Portman
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“Yes, and because we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so misunderstood when we are young; but the nature our strain of blood carries is inside there, waiting, like our skeleton.”

ThinkingFeelsI CanYoungIndividualGrowsStuffWaitingBloodCarrieStrainMisunderstoodSkeletonsSavagery
Book:The Novels and Stories of Willa Cather ...
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“I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.”

PeopleNeedsHumansHuman BeingsDevilCommitInwardDisguiseHornsMentoringFacilitateOdd ThomasSavagery
Book:The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
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“Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel-the spiritual texture-of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can't tell where you are, or why you're there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity.”

FeelsWarSpiritualLawHateOrderCommonChaosSoldierClarityCertaintyPermanentWhere You AreOverwhelmingAnarchyThickFogUglinessCivilityAmbiguityTextureSpillsBindingSavageryVaporSwirls
Book:The Things They Carried
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