Barbarians Best Quotes & Sayings

That strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad. — Olaf Stapledon

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.' Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure. — Kathleen Parker

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian. — Joseph Conrad

The barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open to them. And it's your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you — Christopher Hitchens

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within. — Will Durant

One and all they are driven by the twin engines of ignorance and willful barbarism. You nod, you also are familiar with these two powerful components of our national character, ignorance and willful barbarianism. Yes, everywhere you turn, and even among the most gifted of us, the most extensively educated, these two brute forces of motivation will eventually emerge. The essential information is always missing; sensitivity is a mere veil to self-concern. We are all secret encouragers of ignorance, at heart we are all willful barbarians. — John Hawkes

A strange lot this, to be dropped down in a world of barbarians - men who see clearly enough the barbarity of all ages except their own. — Ernest Howard Crosby

These people weren't Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, weren't trained by the best professional warriors in the world, weren't seasoned by a real war in which they had encountered an enemy who fought back. They lacked the honor of SEALs and Rangers, lacked ideals that stiffened the spine in times of peril. They were fanatics, driven by emotion rather than reason. Their commitment was to destruction instead of to the preservation of what was good, and this
commitment made them feel dangerous, therefore powerful and superior. Being dangerous, however, wasn't the same as being powerful and certainly didn't support a claim to superiority. Like all barbarians, they were vulnerable to panic and confusion when the destruction they wished to wreak was visited instead upon them. — Dean Koontz

No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money. — Samuel Gompers

These squatters aren't just aliens, drifters and undesirables. They're new world barbarians, conquering free spaces and making them their own. — James W. Bodden

In the case of acupuncture, the time period must also be considered. On a fine day, the sun shining, blood in the human body flows smoothly, saliva is free, breathing is easy. On days of chill and cloud, blood flows thick and slow, breathing is heavy, saliva is viscous. When the moon is waxing, blood and breath are full. When the moon wanes, blood and breath wane. Therefore acupuncture should be used only on fair warm days, when the moon is waxing or, best of all, when the moon is full.'
'Interesting,' Grace said in a comment, 'in bioclimatic research in the West, coronary attacks increase in frequency on cold chilly days when the sun is under clouds.'
Dr Tseng turned the page of his blue cloth-covered book. 'Ah, doubtless the barbarians across the four seas have heard of our learning,' he observed without interest. — Pearl S. Buck

Without education and understanding, the barbarians would have outnumbered us and swarmed the city gates a long time ago. — Peter F. Hamilton

Here dwell a people whom the Greeks call Maurusians, and the Romans and the natives Mauri - a large and prosperous Libyan tribe, who live on the side of the strait opposite Iberia. Here also is the strait which is at the Pillars of Heracles, concerning which I have often spoken. On proceeding outside the strait at the Pillars, with Libya on the left, one comes to a mountain which the Greeks call Atlas and the barbarians Dyris.
17.3.2 — Strabo

Turn the anger of the Almighty against the godless Turks and Barbarians who despise Christ the Lord ... In the royal city of the east, they have slain the successor of Constantine and his people, desecrated the temples of the Lord, defiled the noble church of Justinian with their Mohometan abominations. Each success, will only be a stepping stone until he has mastered all the Western Monarchs, overthrow the Christian Faith, and imposed the law of his false prophet on the whole world — Pope Pius II

It is always necessary to remain barbarians, because it is the barbarians who always win. — Irwin Shaw

As once, when the armies of the empire were shattered and the strong barbarians poured in upon the soft provincials, so now the fierce weeds pressed in to destroy the pampered nursling's of man. — George R. Stewart

I've been a barbarian my whole life. I'm just a smarter barbarian now. Evolution, you know? — Brock Lesnar

We are standing face to face with the barbarians. The enemy is no longer outside but inside the City, and the ruling ideology, paralysed, is incapable of spotting him. It stammers, overcome by its own moral disarmament, and is giving up: this is the time to seize the reins. Present society is an accomplice to the evil that is devouring it. — Guillaume Faye

Many readers simply can't stomach fantasy. They immediately picture elves with broadswords or mighty-thewed barbarians with battle axes, seeking the bejeweled Coronet of Obeisance ... (But) the best fantasies pull aside the velvet curtain of mere appearance ... In most instances, fantasy ultimately returns us to our own now re-enchanted world, reminding us that it is neither prosaic nor meaningless, and that how we live and what we do truly matters. — Michael Dirda

Youths of the Pellaians and of the Macedonians and of the Hellenic Amphictiony and of the Lakedaimonians and of the Corinthians ... and of all the Hellenic peoples, join your fellow-soldiers and entrust yourselves to me, so that we can move against the barbarians and liberate ourselves from the Persian bondage, for as Greeks we should not be slaves to barbarians. — Alexander The Great

Now that the wars are coming to an end, I wish you to prosper in peace. May all mortals from now on live like one people in concord and for mutual advancement. Consider the world as your country, with laws common to all and where the best will govern irrespective of tribe. I do not distinguish among men, as the narrow-minded do, both among Greeks and Barbarians. I am not interested in the descendance of the citizens or their racial origins. I classify them using one criterion: their virtue. For me every virtuous foreigner is a Greek and every evil Greek worse than a Barbarian. If differences ever develop between you never have recourse to arms, but solve them peacefully. If necessary, I should be your arbitrator. — Alexander The Great

We tend to forget that unity is, at best, morally neutral and often a source of irrationality and groupthink. Rampaging mobs are unified. The Mafia is unified. Marauding barbarians bent on rape and pillage are unified. Meanwhile, civilized people have disagreements, and small-d democrats have arguments. Classical liberalism is based on this fundamental insight, which is why fascism was always antiliberal. Liberalism rejected the idea that unity is more valuable than individuality. For fascists and other leftists, meaning and authenticity are found in collective enterprises - of class, nation, or race - and the state is there to enforce that meaning on everyone without the hindrance of debate. — Jonah Goldberg

You have been a stronghold for the poor, a stronghold for the needy person in his distress, a refuge from the rain, a shade from the heat. When the breath of the violent is like rain against a wall, 5 like heat in a dry land, You subdue the uproar of barbarians. As the shade of a cloud cools the heat of the day, so He silences the song of the violent. — Anonymous

No. You should take pleasure in following the Lethani. If you fight well, you should take pride in doing a thing well. For the fighting itself you should feel only duty and sorrow. Only barbarians and madmen take pleasure in combat. Whoever loves the fight itself has left the Lethani behind. — Patrick Rothfuss

cold glassy surface of reality. I saw the gentle bookish boy you must have been, made old with tedium, wasted effort, unacknowledged kindnesses. I saw the tired, struggling righteousness of you. You were starving for want of love. You were a delicate, civilised changeling, raised among barbarians and apemen. — Cathy Coote

And now, what will become of us without the barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution. — Constantine P. Cavafy

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Every once in a while, I get the urge. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? The urge for destruction. The urge to hurt, maim, kill.
It's quite a thing, to experience that urge, to let it wash over you, to give in to it. It's addictive. It's all-consuming. You lose yourself to it. It's quite, quite wonderful. I can feel it, even as I speak, tapping around the edges of my mind, trying to prise me open, slip its fingers in. And it would be so easy to let it happen.
But we're all like that, aren't we? We're all barbarians at our core. We're all savage, murderous beasts. I know I am. I'm sure you are. The only difference between us, Mr Prave, is how loudly we roar. I know I roar very loudly indeed. How about you? Do you think you can match me? — Derek Landy

As man becomes more technologically advanced, his barbarity becomes even more lethal — Bangambiki Habyarimana

They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian. — Robert Green Ingersoll

And confronting these men, wild and terrible as we agree that they were, there were men of quite another kind, smiling and adorned with ribbons and stars, silk stockinged, yellow gloved and with polished boots; men who insisted on the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of bigotry, ignorance, enslavement, the death penalty and war, and who, talking in polished undertones, glorified the sword and the executioners' block. For our part, if we had to choose between the barbarians of civilization and those civilized upholders of barbarism we would choose the former. — Victor Hugo

As we manipulate everyday words, we forget that they are fragments of ancient and eternal stories, that we are building our houses with broken pieces of sculptures and ruined statues of gods as the barbarians did. — Bruno Schulz

If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things? — Angela Carter

Basque and Celt. Criminals and barbarians. I didn't think there could be a more primitive pairing of genes. — Karen Marie Moning

We are all youthful barbarians, and only our new toys bring us excitement. That has been the sole purpose of our flights. This one flies higher, that one faster. But now we will make ourselves at home. We will forget the machine, the tool. It is no longer complex; it does what it is supposed to do, unnoticed. And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians. — Mohsin Hamid

Why is she afraid?" he asked. "She's not Anjin-san. Just a little nervous. Please excuse her. She's never seen a foreigner close to before." "Tell her when the moon's full, barbarians sprout horns and fire comes out of our mouths like dragons. — James Clavell

The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians. — Edward Gibbon

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. — Karl Marx

I question whether any Turk, of all that have entered the Paradise of Opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I hounour the barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. — Thomas De Quincey