“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
"A Republic, If You Can Keep It" https://web.archive.org/web/20140327090001/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/articles/12321 (2013) (original emphasis)
“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
Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer
J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 143
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour (1957), p. 245
Context: It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent. If, at the very outset, this movement doubles back on itself toward its point of departure, a person turns round and round like a squirrel in a cage or a prisoner in a condemned cell. Constant turning soon produces revulsion. All workers, especially though not exclusively those who work under inhumane conditions, are easily the victims of revulsion, exhaustion and disgust and the strongest are often the worst affected.
“Fragmentation occurs when a civilization is in decline.”
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer
The Corruptions of Our Time, p. 238
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)
“As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician
On Milton (1825)
“I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless.”
Isaac Asimov book I, Robot
“Reason”, p. 52
I, Robot (1950)
Avram Davidson book Masters of the Maze
Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 2 (p. 30)
Media Kashigar (1956–2017) Iranian translator, writer and poet
Source: The best critic of a translation is its second translation, Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2013 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/3001
Paul Mason (journalist) book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future
PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)
“As some say, Solon was the author of the apophthegm, "Nothing in excess."”
Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers
Solon, 16.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages