John Boyd Orr Quotes

• There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty.

  John Boyd Orr

  Believe, Long, Political

  "Peace!: By the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates : an Anthology, Page 31" by Marek Thee, Unesco Publishing, (p. 162), 1995.

  49 Copy quote

• When the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century brought a rapid increase in wealth, the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth they were creating was conceded only after riots and strikes.

  John Boyd Orr

  Creating, Revolution, Demand

  20 Copy quote

• If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches they will take sandwiches.

  John Boyd Orr

  People, Sandwiches, Politics

  10 Copy quote

• When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions.

  John Boyd Orr

  Social Unrest, Fabric, Revolution

  14 Copy quote

• After the First World War the economic problem was no longer one of production. It was the problem of finding markets to get the output of industry and agriculture dispersed and consumed.

  John Boyd Orr

  War, Agriculture, World

  52 Copy quote

• We are now physically, politically, and economically one world and nations so interdependent that the absolute national sovereignty of nations is no longer possible.

  John Boyd Orr

  World, Sovereignty, Absolutes

  8 Copy quote

• Empires won by conquest have always fallen either by revolt within or by defeat by a rival.

  John Boyd Orr

  Rivals, Empires, Defeat

  8 Copy quote

• It is said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. It may well be that a war neurosis stirred up by propaganda of fear and hatred is the prelude to destruction.

  John Boyd Orr

  War, Mad, Hatred

  19 Copy quote

• Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction.

  John Boyd Orr

  Powerful, War, Weapons

  7 Copy quote

• If the views I have expressed be right, we can think of our civilization evolving with the growth of knowledge from small wandering tribes to large settled law.

  John Boyd Orr

  Thinking, Civilization, Views

  6 Copy quote

• Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.

  John Boyd Orr

  Country, Communication, Years

  7 Copy quote

• Some wars have been due to the lust of rulers for power and glory, or to revenge to wipe out the humiliation of a former defeat.

  John Boyd Orr

  Revenge, War, Lust

  "Nobel Lectures in Peace" by Frederick W. Haberman, World Scientific, (p. 415), 1999.

  7 Copy quote

• Our civilization is now in the transition stage between the age of warring empires and a new age of world unity and peace.

  John Boyd Orr

  Civilization, Unity, Age

  7 Copy quote

• The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion.

  John Boyd Orr

  Appreciate, Arms, Territory

  8 Copy quote

• As we have seen, the wireless and the airplane have made the world so small and nations so dependent on each other that the only alternative to war is the United States of the World.

  John Boyd Orr

  War, Airplane, United States

  8 Copy quote

• As I have tried to show, science, in producing the airplane and the wireless, has created a new international political environment to which governments must adjust their foreign policies.

  John Boyd Orr

  Airplane, Government, Political

  7 Copy quote

• Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope.

  John Boyd Orr

  War, Thinking, Agreement

  75 Copy quote

• In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants.

  John Boyd Orr

  Government, Gunpowder, Warfare

  36 Copy quote

• Knowledge acquired in biological research is seldom directly applicable to human beings ... The results of scientific research, obtained under these conditions, cannot be applied directly to human beings who vary widely in their hereditary make-up, in their environment, and in their past health record.

  John Boyd Orr

  Animal, Past, Records

  4 Copy quote

• The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.

  John Boyd Orr

  Real, Evil, Police

  20 Copy quote

• The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

  John Boyd Orr

  War, Civilization, Intermittent

  7 Copy quote

• Nearly every country in the world is now becoming industrialized as rapidly as it can.

  John Boyd Orr

  Country, World, Becoming

  4 Copy quote

• In the last fifty years science has advanced more than in the 2,000 previous years and given mankind greater powers over the forces of nature than the ancients ascribed to their gods.

  John Boyd Orr

  Years, Lasts, Fifty

  4 Copy quote

• Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.

  John Boyd Orr

  Civilization, Stimulus, Adjustment

  6 Copy quote

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