Carroll Quigley: Trending quotes

“A state of individuals, such as we now have reached in Western Civilization, will not create persons, and the atomized individuals who make it up will be motivated by desires that do not necessarily reflect needs. Instead of needing other people they need a shot of heroin; instead of some kind of religious conviction, they have to be with the winning team.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

People , Motivation , Personality

“…when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries you have… a misplacement of satisfactions. You find your emotional satisfaction in making a lot of money… or in proving to the poor, half-naked people in Southeast Asia that you can kill them in large numbers.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Money , People

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 40

Idea , Knowledge , Science

“This book is not a history. Rather it is an attempt to establish analytical tools that will assist the understanding of history”

Carroll Quigley

Preface to the First Edition, p. 23
The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979)

Books , History , Understanding

“…in our society… this has now become a propagandist system in which emphasis is put on the future… the ideology against which the young people of the 1950's and 1960's rebelled. Future preference: plan; study hard; save.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

People , Study , Future

“The very idea that there is some kind of conflict between science and religion is completely mistaken. Science is a method for investigating experience… Religion is the fundamental, necessary internalization of our system of more permanent values.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Religion , Idea , Science

“…I offended some of you by saying you had been brainwashed. This is not an insult; it's a simple statement of fact. When any infant is born and socialized in a society, even if he is to become a very mature individual, he has been brainwashed. …given a structure for categorizing his experience and a system of values applied to the structure of categories.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“…Western Civilization began to expand in 976. …The economic expansion was achieved chiefly by specialization and exchange… commercialization.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“Another aspect of the nineteenth century propaganda system is the increasing emphasis upon material desires.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“The brainwashing which has been going on for 150 years has also resulted in the replacement of intellectual activities and religion by ideologies and science. …I have nothing against Marx, except that his theories do not explain what happened.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Religion , Science

“The final result will be that the American people will ultimately prefer communities. They will cop out or opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who are not personalities are trained to fit into this bureaucratic structure and say it is a great life--although I would assume that many on their death beds must feel otherwise. The process of copping out will take a long time, but notice: we are already copping out of military service on a wholesale basis; we are already copping out of voting on a large scale basis. …People are also copping out by refusing to pay any attention to newspapers or to what’s going on in the world, and by increasing emphasis on the growth of localism, what is happening in their own neighborhoods.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Life , Death , People , World

“This priesthood became a closed group, able to control enormous wealth and incomes, and concerned very largely with the study of the solar and astronomical periodicities on which there influence was originally based. With the surplus thus created, the priesthood was able to command human labor in huge amounts and to direct this labor from the simple tillage of the peasant peoples to the diversified and specialized activities that constitute civilized living.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 7, Mesopotamian Civilization, p. 213

People , Study , Wealth

“In its final stages the civilization becomes a dualism of almost totalitarian imperial power and an amorphous mass culture of atomized individuals.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“Persons, personalities if you wish, can only be made in communities.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Communication , Personality

“The process by which civilization, as an abstract entity distinct from the societies in which it is embodied, dies or is reborn is a very significant one.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 8, Canaanite and Minooan Civilizations, p. 266

“…human beings have religious needs. They have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about things they cannot control and they do not fully understand, and with humility, they admit they do not understand…”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Feeling , Understanding

“…today everything is commercialized--politics, religion, education, ideology, belief, the armed services. …Everything has its price.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Education , Religion

“…1776 is a very significant year. and this is not just because the American Revolution began. Watt's patent of the steam engine… Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations… the failure of the French to reorganize their political system occurred in 1776, and so forth. …The destruction of communities, the destruction of religion and the frustration of emotions were greatly intensified by the Industrial Revolution: railroads, factories, growth of cities, technological revolution in the countryside and in the growing of food and so forth.”

Carroll Quigley

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Religion , Food , Communication , Failure

“In fact, violence as a symbol of our growing irrationality has had an increasing role in activity for its own sake, when no possible justification could be made that the activity was seeking to resolve a problem.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 405

Problem

“The fundamentalist position on biblical interpretation, with its emphasis on the explicit, complete, final, and authoritarian nature of Scripture, is a very late, minority view quite out of step with the Western tradition.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 342

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