“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“Your Nordic blue eyes looked attentively at the paintings hanging on the walls. I felt stirrings of rebellion: a whole clash between your civilization and my barbarism. Civilization from which you suffer. Barbarism which for me is a rejuvenation.”
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)
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French Post-Impressionist artist 1848–1903Related quotes
Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician
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.”
Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History
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.”
David Hare (1947) British writer
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.”
Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author
Source: Knowledge And Decisions
“Civilization without its appliances is weaker than barbarism.”
Theodore Winthrop book The Canoe and the Saddle
The Canoe and the Saddle: Adventures Among the Northwestern Rivers and Forests (1863), ch. ix: Via Mala.
Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist
"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