barbarism

As man becomes more technologically advanced, his barbarity becomes even more lethal

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science. ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure civilization is, and how precariously it is poised upon the apex of a never-extinct volcano of poor and oppressed barbarism, superstition and ignorance. Modernity is a cap superimposed upon the Middle Ages, which always remain.

Meradinis! Turtle Island! It was a little corner of chaos!This was the scene the speeding black ship had left behind three days ago, fleeing in humiliating shame, those three days a constant running battle. For three days the accursed Imperial ship Indomitable had followed, firing on them at every opportunity. Death or imprisonment now awaited those who called themselves Corsairs _ and though this death was now more certain rather than just a possibility, Sona Kilroy, or __he Hammer_ as he was called by his men, was not prepared to give up his freedom so easily. Piracy was his life and he__ known no other. He was tough and cruel, a despicable man, a case in point when academics quoted the barbarism by which the Corsairs had made themselves known and feared across the star systems of the peaceful Terran Empire.

The modern man is usually in a hurry to get to a destination from which he will sooner or later suffer from and at times complain about boredom.

Passion and courtesy are two polar opposite traits that serve to balance each other into a full-blooded whole.Without socialization, passion is a crude barbarian, and without passion, the elegant and polite are dead.Allow both passion and courtesy into your life in equal measure, and be complete.

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

The Barbarian hopes _ and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers.... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.

On problems finding female ancestors,of any background, remember "I cannot put gas in my car without a note from my husband. The Car, the house, and everything else I think that I own is in his name. When I die, I cannot decide who will receive my personal effects. If he dies first I may be allowed to stay in my own home, or may be given a certain number of days to vacate the premises. Any real estate I inherit from my husband is not mine to sell of devise in a will. All the money I earn belongs to my husband. I cannot operate or engage in business in my own name. If my ancestor is enslaved, I cannot marry, may not be allowed to raise my own children, join a church, travel freely, own property or testify against those who harm me.

I can only imagine that future generations will consider us to have been barbaric for our intolerance of differences.

We human beings regard ourselves as (or compare ourselves to) animals only when it suits us.

Death is number one on the list of things that we wish were possible to leave behind when we escaped barbarism.

What I am trying to tell you,_ Trinka said softly, looking back at him, __s that there are good ways to live, and bad ones. This is not a matter of opinion; it is objective truth. The Empire fights the Wilders because we need their land; that__ true. But there are other reasons. We fight them because they are unworthy. They are not fit to share this world _ this divine gift _ with folk who do not murder children. With people who do not rape women, or make slaves of the weak. The Wilders are undeserving of the gift of life, of divine choice. They are not fit to be called Children of Bræa. Their way of life is a blight upon the earth. They may look like men, but they live, and behave, like beasts.__f they were able to learn to live like civilized folk,_ she sighed, __hen we would make it our business to teach them; indeed, I would account it our duty to bring them into the light. We have tried. It has been more than a century since we first began settling the frontiers beyond the mountains, and in the three-score years since Duncala, we have tried many times to bring them the gift of civilization. But if they will not learn to act like civilized men, then civilized men are not obliged to tolerate them. The whole of Bræa__ creation, her divine intent, and her gift of choice to all of us _ the gift of choice that grants us the possibility, and therefore the obligation, of bettering ourselves! _ cries out against tolerating what by any reasoned definition is utter, bestial depravity. __e are Bræa__ heirs, the inheritors of her divine design. We are not obliged to endure depravity,_ she said gravely. __e are obliged to redeem it, if we can; but if we cannot, then our obligation _ to ourselves, our posterity, and the Holy Mother__ design _ is to end it._ She cocked her head. __n this wise, it might help to think of the Wilders as little different from the hordes of Bardan, whose legacy of death and devastation ended the ancient world, and plunged all into darkness for twice a thousand years._ Her fist clenched involuntarily. __e will not suffer the darkness again, Esuric Mason. My brothers...my former comrades, I mean...they will not allow it._ She looked down at her hands. For a wonder, they were steady. __ will not allow it,_ she whispered.- The Wizard's Eye (Hallow's Heart, Book II; Forthcoming)

Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces.You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew.I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.

Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.

We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.