Carroll Quigley: Trending quotes (page 2)

“The backwardness of our religious and social developments is undoubtedly holding back the development of the intellectual and political levels.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 4, Historical Analysis, p. 122

“When profits are pursued by geographic interchange of goods, so that commerce for profit becomes the central mechanism of the system, we usually call it "commercial capitalism." In such a system goods are conveyed from ares where they are more common (and therefore cheaper) to areas where they are less common (and therefore less cheap). This process leads to regional specialization and to division of labor, both in agricultural production and in handicrafts.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 8, Canaanite and Minooan Civilizations, p. 241

“The link between a society, whether it be made up of communities or individuals, and a state is this: Power rests on the ability to satisfy human needs.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Communication

“No slave system has ever been able to continue to function on the slaves provided by its own biological reproduction because the rate of human reproduction is too slow and the expense from infant mortality and years of unproductive upkeep of the young make this prohibitively expensive. This relationship is one of the basic causes of the American Civil War, and was even more significant in destroying ancient Rome.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 9, Classical Civilization, p. 318

War

“…empires and civilizations do not collapse because of deficiencies on the military or the political levels.”

Carroll Quigley

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

“Men have social needs. They have a need for other people; they have a need to love and be loved.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Love , Men , People

“…a state is not the same thing as a society, although the Greeks and Romans thought it was. A state is an organization of power on a territorial basis.”

Carroll Quigley

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

“It is also in theory, conceivable that some universal empire some day might cover the whole globe, leaving no external "barbarians" to serve as invaders.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 163

Universe

“[Increasing] politicization means the [economic] expansion is slowing up and you are no longer attempting to achieve increased output per capita, or increased wealth, or increased satisfactions… but you are doing so by mobilizing power. We have seen this going on for almost a century. …increased militarization.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Wealth

“Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 333-334

Change , Parting

“Another thing that they have tried to get us to believe in the last 150 years… is that the nation as the repository of sovereignty can be both a state and a community. …Why did the English, the French, the Castilians, the Hohenzollerns, and others become the repository of sovereignty as nations… They did so because… weapons made it possible to compel obedience over areas which were approximately the size of these national groups… nationalism is an episode in history, and it fit a certain power structure and a certain configuration in human life in our civilization. Now… They all want autonomy. …The nation or the state, as we now have it as the structure of power, cannot be a community.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Life , History , Communication

“…increasing remoteness of desires from needs. …increasing confusion between means and ends. The ends are human needs… Instead they want the means they have been brainwashed to accept… Never was any society in human history as rich and as powerful as Western Civilization and the United States, and it is not a happy society.”

Carroll Quigley

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

History , Happiness

“Our society has so cluttered our lives with artifacts [man-made things]… and organizational structures that [our] moment to moment relationships with nature are almost impossible.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Nature

“Even today few scientists and perhaps even fewer nonscientists realize that science is a method and nothing else.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Science

“A society is a group whose members have more relationships with one another then they do with outsiders.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 3, Groups, Societies, and Civilizations, p. 71

“Capitalism might be defined, if we wish to be scientific, as a form of economic organization motivated by the pursuit of profit within a price structure.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 8, Canaanite and Minooan Civilizations, p. 240

Motivation

“…in the last thousand years. If we go back before [AD] 976… the main core of people's life and experience… was in the religious, emotional and social levels. They had religious beliefs, they had social and emotional relationships with people they saw every day. …controls and rewards were internalized. …This is why they could get along without a state in 976: all the significant controls were internalized.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Life , People

“We have now done what the Romans did when they started to commit suicide. We have shifted from an army of citizens to an army of mercenaries…”

Carroll Quigley

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

Suicide

“A community is made up of intimate relationships among diversified types of individuals--a kinship group, a local group, a neighborhood, a village, a large family.”

Carroll Quigley

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

Family , Communication

“Every civilization must be organized in such a way that it has invention, capital accumulation, and investment.”

Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 137

Way