Original: Votre œil bleu du nord regardait attentivement les tableaux pendus aux murs. J’eus comme le pressentiment d’une révolte : tout un choc entre votre civilisation et ma barbarie. Civilisation dont vous souffrez. Barbarie qui est pour moi un rajeunissement.
Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 105: quote from his letter to August Strindberg (5 May 1895)
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"
Attributed to Clemenceau by Hans Bendix, in "Merry Christmas, America!" The Saturday Review of Literature (1 December 1945), p. 9; this appears to be the earliest reference to such a remark as one by Clemenceau, though earlier, in Frank Lloyd Wright : An Autobiography (1943) there is mention that "A witty Frenchman has said of us: 'The United States of America is the only nation to plunge from barbarism to degeneracy with no culture in between.'" Similar remarks are sometimes attributed without a source to Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.
Variants:
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between.
Post-Prime Ministerial
“There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.”
Variant: There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), VII
Source: On the Concept of History
“The ultimate tendency of civilization is toward barbarism.”
Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 459.
Misattributed
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”
Source: Knowledge And Decisions
“Civilization without its appliances is weaker than barbarism.”
The Canoe and the Saddle: Adventures Among the Northwestern Rivers and Forests (1863), ch. ix: Via Mala.
"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems
