Carroll Quigley: Quotes about people

Carroll Quigley was American historian. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Carroll Quigley: 158 quotes0 likes

“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)

“…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)

“…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)

“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)

“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

“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)

“…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)

“For years I have told my students that I been trying to train executives rather than clerks. The distinction between the two is parallel to the distinction previously made between understanding and knowledge. It is a mighty low executive who cannot hire several people with command of more knowledge than he has himself.”

Carroll Quigley

Conclusion, p. 420
The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979)

“…they give us vicarious satisfactions for many of our frustrations. …People need exercise; they do not need to watch other people exercise… Another vicarious satisfaction is sexy magazines; this is vicarious sex. To anyone rushing to buy one, I'd like to say, "The real thing is better."”

Carroll Quigley

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

“When you destroy people's religious expression, they will establish secularized religions like Marxism.”

Carroll Quigley

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

“The difference between a stable society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one are external. In a stable society government ultimately becomes unnecessary; the restraints on people's actions are internal, they're self-disciplined…”

Carroll Quigley

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