Barbarity Quotes - Page 2

• The United Nations is the best hope to spare humanity from the barbarity of war, from the senseless death, destruction and dislocation it brings about.

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  War, Humanity, Destruction

  "Rights expert urges the UN General Assembly to adopt a more decisive role in peace-making (For International Day of Peace, Saturday 21 September 2013)". dezayasalfred.wordpress.com. September 21, 2013.

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• Though slavery is thought, by some, to be mild in Missouri, when compared with the cotton, sugar and rice growing states, yet no part of our slave-holding country is more noted for the barbarity of its inhabitants than St. Louis.

  William Wells Brown

  Country, Sugar, Growing

  William Wells Brown (2012). “The Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• Barbarity, caprice; these qualities, however nominally disguised, we may universally observe from the ruling character of the deity in all regular religions.

  David Hume

  Religious, Character, Evil

  David Hume (1793). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.467

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• When this immediate evil power has been defeated, we shall not yet have won the long battle with the elemental barbarities. Another Hitler, it may be an invisible adversary, will attempt, again, and yet again, to destroy our frail civilization. Is it true, I wonder, that the only way to escape a war is to be in it? When one is a part of an actuality does the imagination find a release?

  Ellen Glasgow

  War, Civilization, Evil

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• Since early middle ages when people generally taking away the barbarity of their like, were pretty content. Although it was all an illicit contentment, what with the slave systems all over the world, in England especially, the peasants and the master, etc. People were incredibly content.

  David Bowie

  People, Contentment, Age

  "New Again: David Bowie". Interview with Patrick Salvo, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 6, 2012.

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• How many brave Men, courageous Women, and innocent Children did I see butcher'd, to do God good Service?. .. I went to the Irish Rebellion, where I saw more than three hundred thousand Souls murder'd in cold Blood.crying, Nits will become Lice, destroy Root and Branch: with a thousand other Barbarities, too tedious as well as too dreadful to repeat, beside what has been transacted abroad.

  Mary Davys

  Children, Women, Blood

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• A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Civilization, Luxury, Selfishness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.227

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• ISIS is a terrorist entity whose barbarities have been condemned by all those who value our common humanity. In the current political climate, when hate crimes are rising and political rhetoric is increasingly divisive, this is all the more shocking.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Hate, Isis, Common Humanity

  Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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• Like so many of our people, we have now had a personal experience of German barbarity which only strengthens the resolution of all of us to fight through to final victory.

  George VI

  War, Fighting, People

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• We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity.

  Thomas Merton

  Ignorance, Men, Justice

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• A life sentence without parole protects public safety while sparing us the barbarity of killing our own. It teaches our children that violence will be punished, but not by emulating the violent. This seems eminently more consistent with American ideals than continuing to share the killing stage with some of the world's worst human rights violators.

  Mike Farrell

  Children, Rights, Safety

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• The Indians , whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.

  John Locke

  Passion, Giving, Reform

  John Locke (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of John Locke (Illustrated)”, p.1542, Delphi Classics

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• American fighters of the Pacific War were not heroes. The desperation of island combat included exchanged barbarities of which no one would willingly speak for a generation. On the American side, there were foul racism, vengeful refusals to take prisoners, a generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war.

  James Carroll

  War, Hero, Air

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• Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all of the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

  Frederick Douglass

  Practice, America, Hypocrisy

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

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• The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, World, Politics

  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Anne Applebaum (2007). “The Gulag Archipelago Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation”, Harper Perennial Modern Classics

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• It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ...But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.

  John Dryden

  Beautiful, Latin, Expression

  "William Gilbert of Colchester". Book by P. Fleury Mottelay, 1893.

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• One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries - Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Religious, Intelligent, Two

  "The World of George Orwell" edited by Miriam Gross, (p. 167), 1972.

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• I remember reports that the American and English newspapers were very happy about the fact that so many were killed in Dresden. There are many instances of barbarity and cruelty on the part of the Allies which I could tell you.

  Julius Streicher

  Allies, Facts, Remember

  Said to Leon Goldensohn, June 15, 1946. "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• What if culture itself is nothing but a halt, a break, a respite, in the pursuit of barbarity?

  Slavoj Žižek

  What If, Culture, Break

  Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek (2011). “Living in the End Times”, p.6, Verso

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• Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty.

  Henry Stephens Salt

  Men, Soul, Church

  "Seventy Years Among Savages". Book by Henry Stephens Salt, 1921.

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• You point out that war is only a symptom of the whole horrid business of human behavior, and cannot be isolated. And that, even if we abolish war, we shall not abolish hate and greed. So might it have been argued about slave emancipation, that slavery was but one aspect of human disgustingness, and that to abolish it would not end the barbarity that causes it. But did the abolitionists therefore waste their breath? And do we waste ours now in protesting against war?

  Rose Macaulay

  Hate, War, Greed

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• There was a generation of kids who were just kind of emulating distant heroes and wearing peace symbols, and parents who were thinking of themselves as liberal and removed from barbarity, but it also was the era of Vietnam. I very much was influenced - and I think the whole country was kind of in a state of shock - for the first time seeing the horror and cruelty of war.

  Wes Craven

  Country, War, Hero

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. March 11, 2009.

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