“It is unhappy enough that the unavoidable consequence of all our voyages of discovery, has always been the loss of a number of innocent lives; but this heavy injury done to the little uncivilized communities which Europeans have visited, is trifling when compared to the irretrievable harm entailed upon them by corrupting their morals.”

— Georg Forster, book A Voyage Round the World

Book I, ch. VI, Stay at the New Year's Islands. Discovery of lands to the southward. Return to the Cape of Good Hope.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is unhappy enough that the unavoidable consequence of all our voyages of discovery, has always been the loss of a nu…" by Georg Forster?

Georg Forster6

German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist, … 1754–1794

Related quotes

“I must painfully record my opinion that grave injury has been done to religion in many minds — not in instructed minds, but in those which are ill-instructed or partially instructed, which have a large claim on our consideration — in consequence of steps which have, unhappily, been taken. Great mischief has been done in many minds through the resistance offered to the man elected by the constituency of Northampton, which a portion of the community believe to be unjust. When they see the profession of religion and the interests of religion ostensibly associated with what they are deeply convinced is injustice, they are led to questions about religion itself, which they see to be associated with injustice. Unbelief attracts a sympathy which it would not otherwise enjoy; and the upshot is to impair those convictions and that religious faith, the loss of which I believe to be the most inexpressible calamity which can fall either upon a man or upon a nation.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

1880s <br class="br">Source: Except from a speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1883/apr/26/second-reading-adjourned-debate-second in the House of Commons (26 April 1883) in support of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh being permitted to take his seat in Parliament.

“I most sincerely console with you for the loss of your dear little girl, but it is our duty to submit with all the resignation human nature is capable of to the dispensation of Divine Providence which bestows upon us our blessings, and consequently has a right to take them away.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Letter to his daughter Sarah Mason McCarty after the death of an infant daughter (10 February 1785), published in The Life of George Mason, 1725-1792 Vol. 2 (1892) by Kate Mason Rowland, p. 74

“Every generation of Americans since has had to reenact the loss of our innocence. Smog over L. A. was the loss of our innocence. Vietnam was the loss of our innocence. Gettysburg was the loss of our innocence. Ingrid Bergman’s baby was the loss of our innocence. Oklahoma City was the loss of our innocence. The World Trade Center was the loss of our innocence. Other nations are cynical. America has preferred the child’s game of “discovering” evil—Europe’s or Asia’s, her grandfather’s, even her own.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

“Indian civilization has had the unique honour of demonstrating to the world that man does not live by bread alone. Cultural, moral and spiritual values have always formed the fundamental underpinning of our society. To-day there are signs of the weakening of the moral and spiritual fibre in our public life with evils of communalism, w:Casteismcasteism, violence and corruption bedevilling our society.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Source: "Speech By Shri Kocheril Raman Narayanan On His Assumption Of Office As President Of India"

“I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his other writings.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Said to Sir Louis Mallet by Cobden on his death bed within two days before his death, quoted in Richard Gowing, Richard Cobden (London: Cassell, 1890), p. 130.
1860s

“Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury; … [and] I have been appointed leader of the Greeks …”

Arrian (89–175) Roman historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the 2nd-century

Anabasis Alexandri II, 14, 4.

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

418
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

As quoted in "A Visit to Nikola Tesla" by Dragislav L. Petković in Politika (April 1927); also in Tesla, Master of Lightning (1999) by Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, p. 82

“And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Georg Forster6

Related quotes

Related topics