“Savages…are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline.”

— John le Carré , book The Mission Song

The Mission Song (2006)

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 "Savages…are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline." by John le Carré?

John le Carré 42

British novelist and spy 1931

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 7, On The Teeth Of Wheels, p. 139

“Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Top Gear, 2 November 2008; as quoted in "Clarkson joke sparks complaints" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7707641.stm, BBC News, 4 November 2008
Top Gear

“And gears," said Anathema. "My bike didn't have gears. I'm sure my bike didn't have gears."

Crowley leaned over to the angel. "Oh lord, heal this bike," he whispered sarcastically.

"I'm sorry, I just got carried away," hissed Aziraphale.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Mankind is now caught up, as though in a train of gears, at the heart of a continually accelerating vortex of self-totalisation”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Man's Place in Nature https://archive.org/stream/MansPlaceInNature/Mans_Place_in_Nature#page/n101/mode/2up (1966), p. 100

“Progress is not natural. We are geared to go round and round. The reformer should not expect too much. We are only as far along as we are. It is the nature of granite to be hard. And it is the nature of man to be mechanical.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Imitative Instinct", p. 158
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)

“I witnessed the gruesome workings of the machinery of death; gear meshed with gear, like clockwork. It was the biggest and most enormous dance of death of all times.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

CBC report (2000)

“Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he recognizes it as such or not.”

Philip Wylie (1902–1971) American writer

Source: Generation of Vipers (1942), p. 116

“The modern world is not geared properly to the storage of goods.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter III, The Paradox of the Stockpile, p. 23

“We have revolutionary thought whenever the feeling "life is a dream" becomes geared to an impulse to awaken from it.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Four, p. 83

“this vision cannot be of a single mind – a single concept, it is a small tooth in the gear of man..
.. which to each man, one at a time, offers a marvel of close communion”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1940s, The Question – What is your Hope' (c. 1940s)

“Savages…are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John le Carré 42

Related quotes

Related topics