We Are Savages Quotes & Sayings

I can live without you,' she said. 'I can live without a man I've only known for one hundred and eighty days.'

'And how have those calculations helped?' he demanded to know.

She didn't respond except for a look down her nose at him and a curl of her lip. So much for the angry half-spirits being responsible for the savages within them both. This was pure Quintana.

'Then step away,' he taunted. 'If you can live without me, step away.'
He felt her warm breath on his throat.

'Because you can't,' he said. 'You think you can, but we're bound, and not just by the gods or by a curse or even by our son. We are bound by our free will. And you can't step away, because you are not willing.'

He bent, his mouth close to hers.
'Step away,' he whispered. 'If you step away I'll learn from you. I'll find the desire in me to live without you. Much the same as you want to live without me. — Melina Marchetta

Thirty paces, twenty, and you can see the eyes of the men who will try to kill you, and see the spear-blades, and the instinct is to stop, to straighten the shields. We cringe from battle, fear claws at us, time seems to stop, there is silence though a thousand men shout, and at that moment, when terror savages the heart like a trapped beast, you must hurl yourself into the horror.
Because the enemy feels the same.
And you have come to kill him. You are the beast from his nightmares. — Bernard Cornwell

We are in the process of instituting a reign of terror on earth, and there's only one word that justifies that as far as these savages are concerned: the word of this or that god. In name of a divine entity we can do whatever the hell we like and most of those fools down there will swallow it like a bitter pill. — Salman Rushdie

Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible. — John Trudell

A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify. — Henry Home, Lord Kames

We received our colouring from the Norsemen, hairy savages who hacked their gods to pieces and hung the flesh from trees. We are the ones who sacked Rome. Fear only feeble old age and death in bed. Don't forget who you are. — Janet Fitch

We are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else. — Cheryl Strayed

Are we savages or what? — William Golding

"Stepping outside your comfort zone is supposed to feel uncomfortable because we're in new and unfamiliar territory. Being uncomfortable is a sign of success, NOT of failure! So if we are uncomfortably outside our comfort zones, then than means we are growing!!! And THAT is cause for celebration!" (modified from a passage in Roz Savage's "Rowing the Atlantic") — Roz Savage

Alone we are savages, together we are civilization — Ashok K. Banker

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. — Thomas A. Edison

In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the street or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of nature, and we do as the poor brutes do. The wounded stag leaves the herd; and if there is anything on a dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? — William Golding

When we reflect upon the cruelties daily practised upon such of the animal creation as are given us for food, or which we ensnarefor our diversion, we shall be obliged to own that there is more of the savage in human nature than we are aware of. — Samuel Richardson

We are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour. — Tennessee Williams

When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?
Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us
Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians
sprung from one head and made in one image. — Herman Melville

We abandon our backboards along with our decorum, racing for the stairs and the promise of freedom, however temporary it may be.

"Walk!" Mrs. Nightwing shouts. When we cannot seem to heed her advice, she bellows after us that we are savages not fit for marriage. She adds that we shall be the shame of the school and something else besides, but we are down the first flight of stairs, and her words cannot touch us. — Libba Bray

You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. — Oscar Wilde

We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today? — Henry David Thoreau

I took delight in hurling books across the room if I knew I would not be reading the second chapter. Then I'd go and pick them up again, because they are books, after all, and we are not savages. — Neil Gaiman

To sum up: all nature-spirits are not the same as fairies; nor are all fairies nature-spirits. The same applies to the relationship of nature-spirits and the dead. But we may safely say that a large proportion of nature-spirits became fairies, while quite a number of the dead in some areas seem to take on the character of nature-spirits. We cannot expect any fixity of rule in dealing with barbaric thought. We must take it as it comes. It bears the same relationship to "civilized" or folk-lore theory as does the growth of the jungle to a carefully designed and meticulously labelled botanical garden. As Victor Hugo once exclaimed when writing of the barbaric confusion which underlies the creative function in poetry: 'What do you expect? You are among savages! — Lewis Spence

Black people are just constantly immature in their thinking, undisciplined, and we suffer as a people. This is not about race in the sense that black people got to get something better than whites or Latinos or Asians. This is just basically that we keep complaining about what we don't have and what we can't do, and then, when we get in positions to do stuff, we fight amongst ourselves like savages. — KRS-One

We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns. — Bertrand De Jouvenel

It seemed in life, whenever you were wanted, it was for some discussion or explanation. Silence was just something to be filled. — Jessie Atkin

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. — William Golding

Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cleaning graves and sitting next to them before fires, sharing food with those who will not eat again. We raise children and tell them other things about who they can be and what they are worth: to us, everything. We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive; we are savages. — Jesmyn Ward

Fireflies ... They'll follow you wherever you like, as long as you're polite to 'em. — Jessie Atkin

we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. With — Oscar Wilde

We are all savages inside. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. — Cheryl Strayed

Pity is not natural to man. Children and savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; but we have not pity unless we wish to relieve him. — Samuel Johnson

We are all savages — George Bernard Shaw

You go to bed angry or sad enough, you can wake up just about anywhere — Jessie Atkin

Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements, we who are made up of the same elements? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The removal of the Indians was explained by Lewis Cass - Secretary of War, governor of the Michigan territory, minister to France, presidential candidate: A principle of progressive improvement seems almost inherent in human nature ... We are all striving in the career of life to acquire riches of honor, or power, or some other object, whose possession is to realize the day dreams of our imaginations; and the aggregate of these efforts constitutes the advance of society. But there is little of this in the constitution of our savages. — Howard Zinn

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? — Guy De Maupassant