Best Barbarism Quotes & Sayings

Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made. The varying degrees of culture are measured by the greater or less precision of the standards. Where there is little such precision, these standards rule existence only grosso modo; where there is much they penetrate in detail into the exercise of all the activities. — Ortega Y Gasset

Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after the holocaust is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation. — Theodor Adorno

War is at best barbarism. — William Tecumseh Sherman

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

Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice. — Michel De Montaigne

If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism. — Thomas Jefferson

Life is worth living and no matter what it throws at you it is important to keep your eyes on the prize of the happiness that will come. Even when the Death Railway reduced us to little more than animals, humanity in the shape of our saintly medical officers triumphed over barbarism.
Remember, while it always seems darkest before the dawn, perseverance pays off and the good times will return. — Alistair Urquhart

He would have been half-hanged, taken down alive, castrated, his genitals stuffed in his mouth, his stomach slit open, and his intestines taken out and burnt, and his carcase chopped into four quarters. — John Broadbent

Time was when genius was more precious than gold, but
now to have nothing is monstrous barbarism. — Ovid

As a lover of truth, the national propaganda of all the belligerent nations sickened me. As a lover of civilization, the return to barbarism appalled me. — Bertrand Russell

It was a war of reason against barbarism, supposedly, with the issues at stake on such a high plane that most of our feverish fighters had no idea why they were fighting - other than that the enemy was a bunch of bastards. — Kurt Vonnegut

Deep knowledge is not knowledge of the thing itself, but knowledge of a thing like the thing. Then, you gain not one knowledge, but two knowledges. Of the thing. And of the original thing with is like the thing. Which is the barbarism of the privileged class. — George Bernard Shaw

A political system seeking to function amongst ignorant, illiterate and barbaric people could have marvelous principles but could only succeed in being ignorant, illiterate and barbaric unless one addressed the people one by one and cured the ignorance, illiteracy and barbarism of each citizen. — L. Ron Hubbard

America is the only civilization in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization — Georges Clemenceau

I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable on earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization. — Marquis De Custine

Protect art. It is the antidote to the innate barbarism of the human race. — Peter Adolphsen

When I started playing the bass, I became kind of fascinated by it and started investigating various styles of bass playing, and I was really struck with funk music, mainly American funk music - Stanley Clarke, Funkadelic and that kind of stuff. That comes out in a couple of songs like 'Barbarism Begins at Home.' — Andy Rourke

My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed. — Robert E. Howard

War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine ... War is hell. — William Tecumseh Sherman

America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world. — Dinesh D'Souza

War is at its best barbarism. — William Tecumseh Sherman

The Roman clergy thus adopted the old aristocracy's ideal of libertas, which had little to do with freedom; rather, it referred to the maintenance of the privileged position of the ruling class, lest society lapse into barbarism. — Karen Armstrong

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a Colossus shall we be when the Southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason & freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries. — Thomas Jefferson

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

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

One topic which often brings liberals and conservatives together in the U.S. is Iran. There is a general consensus that the Revolution was the embodiment of backwardness and barbarism. — Mohammad Marandi

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. — George Bernard Shaw

It seems to me that if one had kept silence up to now regarding religion, people would still be submerged in the most grotesque and dangerous superstition ... regarding government, we would still be groaning under the bonds of feudal government ... regarding morals, we would still be having to learn what is virtue and what is vice. To forbid all these discussions, the only ones worthy of occupying a good mind, is to perpetuate the reign of ignorance and barbarism. — Denis Diderot

The first parts of Europe 'to emerge from barbarism,' Briffault says, were those most directly under the influence of 'Moorish' culture: the Spanish Marches of Catalonia, Provence, and Sicily. — S.E. Al-Djazairi

The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men's only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be. — St. Jerome

Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists. — George Santayana

The Soviets made me change Romeo and Juliet so that it would have a happy ending, a barbarism, because living people can dance, but the dead cannot dance lying down. — Sergey Prokofiev

It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage: that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships; that has given us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism. — John Ramsay McCulloch

It is up to the school more than anything else to work against barbarism. ... By barbarism, I do not mean the Beatles. — T. W. Adorno

Without consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory characteristics of crowds. Its civilisation is now without stability, and at the mercy of every chance. The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts. The civilisation may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front, the work of a long past, but it is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall in at the first storm. To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people. — Gustave Le Bon

Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic) — Immanuel Kant

The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilisation and lusty, famishing barbarism. — Winston Churchill