Ellen Glasgow Quotes

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

War is a specific product of civilization.

War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.

The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

Sectarianism, bigotry, and it's horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful Earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now.

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

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.

A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, one that puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to sadistic work building more and more destructive weapons, is no civilization at all. It needs a radical transformation from the heart outwards. It needs to outgrow and outlaw war just as in the last century it outlawed slavery. The human race has outgrown war, but it hardly knows it yet.

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.

War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil.

Whatever fosters militarism makes for barbarism; whatever fosters peace makes for civilization.

War is a foolish, childish, animalistic, unthinking, unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose.

We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.

Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart.

War provides an outlet for every evil element in man's nature. It enfranchises cupidity and greed gives a charter to petty tyranny, glorifies cruelty and places in positions of power the vulgar and base.

The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.

In time of war, the Devil makes more room in Hell.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.