
An Old Chaos: Frozen Horses and Deserts of Brick (p. 25)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)
Source: Lord of the Flies
An Old Chaos: Frozen Horses and Deserts of Brick (p. 25)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)
“Before being humans, we are animals.”
Source: Artificial Societies of Intelligent Agents (2001), p. 26 (also on p. 4)
Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)
“Human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human.”
Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 3
UN Address (1999)
Context: For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.
While we spend much of our time and a great deal of our treasure in preparing for war, we see no comparable effort to establish a lasting peace. Meanwhile, emphasizing the sloth in this regard, those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.
Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)
Context: Suppose we had a man in this country who could control the wind, the rain and lightning, and suppose we elected him to govern these things, and suppose that he allowed whole States to dry and wither, and at the same time wasted the rain in the sea. Suppose that he allowed the winds to destroy cities and to crush to shapelessness thousands of men and women, and allowed the lightnings to strike the life out of mothers and babes. What would we say? What would we think of such a savage? And yet, according to the theologians, this is exactly the course pursued by God.