“Civilization, I sometimes think, is little more than a thin veneer of culture covering a host of red-assed baboons!”
Leonard Read Journals, November 11, 1951 https://history.fee.org/leonard-read-journal/1951/leonard-e-read-journal-november-1951/
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Leonard E. Read 23
American academic 1898–1983Related quotes

“Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.”
La politesse cache très-imparfaitement l’égoïsme général.
Part I, ch. VII.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)
“Commerce and Culture,” p. 280.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)
Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 334

Source: Short fiction, The Man Who Sold The Stars (2013), p. 338
Source: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), P. 10
“Sometimes I think I live more closely to the past than the present.”
Source: Dragon Bones

John F. Kennedy, address at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1963-10-26).
Misattributed

Source: Sen. Chris Coons and Caitlin Flanagan, Natural Immunity, (2021)