Hilaire Belloc Quotes

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

The most frequent reason why men desire to hurt each other, ariseth hence, that many men at the same time have an Appetite to the same thing; which yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it.

Without game, men prey on each other.

The battle between two men over a girl is the same as the fight for two men over a piece of land. It is all about desire. There is no difference between a love triangle and the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die.

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.

The world is so competitive, aggressive, consumive, selfish and during the time we spend here we must be all but that.

I think that genetically we're programmed to battle each other.

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

Nobody knows through how many thousands of years fighting men have made a place for themselves while the weak and peaceable have gone to the wall.

Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

Man is a competitive creature, and the seeds of conflict are built deep into our genes. We fought each other on the savannah and only survived against great odds by organising ourselves into groups which would have had a common purpose, giving morale and fortitude.

Man is a predatory animal, and this aspect of his nature is nowhere better suited by environment than in the world of politics.

People are violent by nature. That’s why we rule the earth; we beat the crap out of everyone else.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

I kind of focus on my own stuff, really, and then when people come into my territory, I've got to fight them away, and that's what we do every time fight night happens.

War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins.

There'll always be wars because men love wars. Women don't, but men do.

I can stand out the war with any man.