Carroll Quigley quotes - page 3

For years I have told my students that I been trying to train executives rather than clerks. The distinction between the two is parallel to the distinction previously made between understanding and knowledge. It is a mighty low executive who cannot hire several people with command of more knowledge than he has himself. (Carroll Quigley)
Each individual in a society is a nexus where innumerable relationships of this character intersect. View quote
Carroll Quigley
The failure of Christianity in the areas west from Sicily was even greater, and was increased by the spread of Arab outlooks and influence to that area, and especially to Spain. View quote
Carroll Quigley
The link between a society, whether it be made up of communities or individuals, and a state is this: Power rests on the ability to satisfy human needs. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Men have social needs. They have a need for other people; they have a need to love and be loved. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Every civilization must be organized in such a way that it has invention, capital accumulation, and investment. View quote
Carroll Quigley
A state of individuals, such as we now have reached in Western Civilization, will not create persons, and the atomized individuals who make it up will be motivated by desires that do not necessarily reflect needs. Instead of needing other people they need a shot of heroin; instead of some kind of religious conviction, they have to be with the winning team. View quote
Carroll Quigley
...when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries you have... a misplacement of satisfactions. You find your emotional satisfaction in making a lot of money... or in proving to the poor, half-naked people in Southeast Asia that you can kill them in large numbers. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Closely related to the erroneous idea that science is a body of knowledge is the equally erroneous idea that scientific theories are true. View quote
Carroll Quigley
...Western Civilization began to expand in 976. ...The economic expansion was achieved chiefly by specialization and exchange... commercialization. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Another aspect of the nineteenth century propaganda system is the increasing emphasis upon material desires. (Carroll Quigley)
In its final stages the civilization becomes a dualism of almost totalitarian imperial power and an amorphous mass culture of atomized individuals. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Persons, personalities if you wish, can only be made in communities. View quote
Carroll Quigley
...today everything is commercialized--politics, religion, education, ideology, belief, the armed services. ...Everything has its price. View quote
Carroll Quigley
The fundamentalist position on biblical interpretation, with its emphasis on the explicit, complete, final, and authoritarian nature of Scripture, is a very late, minority view quite out of step with the Western tradition. View quote
Carroll Quigley
...the nineteenth century Age of Expansion... brought on an acceleration of the main focus of the activities of society... from the areas of internal controls to the areas of external controls. ...the increasing role of propaganda... helped create an impression of stability. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Western ideology believed that the world was good because it was made by God in six days and that at the end of each day He looked at His work and said that it was good. View quote
Carroll Quigley
When Rome fell, the Christian answer was, "Create our own communities." View quote
Carroll Quigley
When these extremists argued for "either-or," the Western tradition answered "both!" View quote
Carroll Quigley
When you destroy people's religious expression, they will establish secularized religions like Marxism. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Without communities, no infant will be sufficiently socialized... and that occurs in the first four or five years of life. ...The first two years are important. ...of vital importance. He has to be loved, above all he has to be talked to. (Carroll Quigley)
...in our society... this has now become a propagandist system in which emphasis is put on the future... the ideology against which the young people of the 1950's and 1960's rebelled. Future preference: plan; study hard; save. View quote
Carroll Quigley
The final result will be that the American people will ultimately prefer communities. They will cop out or opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who are not personalities are trained to fit into this bureaucratic structure and say it is a great life--although I would assume that many on their death beds must feel otherwise. The process of copping out will take a long time, but notice: we are already copping out of military service on a wholesale basis; we are already copping out of voting on a large scale basis. ...People are also copping out by refusing to pay any attention to newspapers or to what's going on in the world, and by increasing emphasis on the growth of localism, what is happening in their own neighborhoods. View quote
Carroll Quigley
...human beings have religious needs. They have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about things they cannot control and they do not fully understand, and with humility, they admit they do not understand... View quote
Carroll Quigley
...1776 is a very significant year. and this is not just because the American Revolution began. Watt's patent of the steam engine... Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations... the failure of the French to reorganize their political system occurred in 1776, and so forth. ...The destruction of communities, the destruction of religion and the frustration of emotions were greatly intensified by the Industrial Revolution: railroads, factories, growth of cities, technological revolution in the countryside and in the growing of food and so forth. View quote
Carroll Quigley