Carroll Quigley Quotes

Each individual in a society is a nexus where innumerable relationships of this character intersect.

...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.

This book is not a history. Rather it is an attempt to establish analytical tools that will assist the understanding of history

The economic and technological achievements of industrialization in this period were fundamentally mistaken. ...based upon plundering the natural capital of the globe that was created over millions of years: the plundering of the soils and their fertility; the plundering of human communities whether they were our own or someone else's.

...we were brainwashed into believing... that the only important thing was individualism. They called it freedom. There is no such thing as freedom. There is something called liberty; it's quite different. ...read [Guido de] Ruggiero's History of European Liberalism... Freedom is freedom from restraints. We're always under restraints.

To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time. But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual ability and training, a self conscious awareness of what one is doing, experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all, perspective.

These seven stages we shall name as follows:
1. Mixture
2. Gestation
3. Expansion
4. Age of Conflict
5. Universal Empire
6. Decay
7. Invasion

When you destroy people's religious expression, they will establish secularized religions like Marxism.

...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.

The difference between a stable society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one are external. In a stable society government ultimately becomes unnecessary; the restraints on people's actions are internal, they're self-disciplined...

The brainwashing which has been going on for 150 years has also resulted in the replacement of intellectual activities and religion by ideologies and science. ...I have nothing against Marx, except that his theories do not explain what happened.

A community is made up of intimate relationships among diversified types of individuals--a kinship group, a local group, a neighborhood, a village, a large family.

The backwardness of our religious and social developments is undoubtedly holding back the development of the intellectual and political levels.

We have now done what the Romans did when they started to commit suicide. We have shifted from an army of citizens to an army of mercenaries...

...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.