Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 193
“Robbery and murder are the worst of human crimes; but in the West there are robbers and murderers. There are those who form cliques to vie for the reins of power and who, when deprived of that power, decry the injustice of it all. Even worse, international diplomacy is really based on the art of deception. Surveying the situation as a whole, all we can say is that there is a general prevalence of good over bad, but we can hardly call the situation perfect.”
Bunmeiron no Gairyaku [An Outline of a Theory of Civilization] (1875).
Context: Robbery and murder are the worst of human crimes; but in the West there are robbers and murderers. There are those who form cliques to vie for the reins of power and who, when deprived of that power, decry the injustice of it all. Even worse, international diplomacy is really based on the art of deception. Surveying the situation as a whole, all we can say is that there is a general prevalence of good over bad, but we can hardly call the situation perfect. When, several thousand years hence, the levels of knowledge and virtue of the peoples of the world will have made great progress (to the point of becoming utopian), the present condition of the nations of the West will surely seem a pitifully primitive stage. Seen in this light, civilization is an open-ended process. We cannot be satisfied with the present level of attainment of the West.
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Fukuzawa Yukichi 12
Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur … 1835–1901Related quotes

“We are in a society where the power is in the hands of those who are the worst breed of humanity.”
Speech in Rochester, New York (16 February 1965)
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Source: On Doing the Right Thing and Other Essays (1928), p. 143
Source: Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer, (1985), p. 196 (Chapter 23, “The Libertarian Philosophy and Taxation")