Voltaire Quotes

We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.

We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only, but are reveling on the blood of every living people

… thrashing a cannibal

I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely.

For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.

Are we savages or what?

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill?

Did you get hungry and eat my colleagues?

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.

The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.

Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.

The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.

Civilisation is only a pretense. In crisis we have become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and instead becoming the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone we will use the moment it comes close enough

In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.

I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.

I want your heart, I want to eat your children.

I will eat grandfather for dinner.

Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages much sooner than savages become civilized by means of religion and civil government.

The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.

A hungry mob is an angry mob.

You mean they killed her?" asked David. They ate her," said Brother Number One. "With porridge. That's what 'ran away and was never seen again' means in these parts. It means 'eaten.'" Um and what about 'happily ever after'?" asked David, a little uncertainly. "What does that mean?" Eaten quickly," said Brother Number One.

Man is too near all kinds of beasts,--a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.