“Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky , book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 7 (page 23)
Notes from Underground (1864)
Context: And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I’d say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened.... Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

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Fyodor Dostoyevsky 155

Russian author 1821–1881

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“And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I’d say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened.... Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 7 (page 23)
Notes from Underground (1864)

“If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house, then in a field,… it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”

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“Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

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“The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

394
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.