The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface.
quote by Aldous Huxley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
Initial Attraction
What lies beneath the surface smile?
which you display to everyone?
The mask you wear to be in style.
What lies beneath is yours alone.
Does it indicate interest?
What lies beneath the surface smile?
And will I perhaps pass the test
enjoy your company for a while.
Is it a sign of practiced guile?
or simple act of self defence.
What lies beneath the surface smile?
Must I rely on my sixth sense?
My need to know grows more intense
I am prepared to wait awhile
to try and gain your confidence.
What lies beneath the surface smile?
(poeticpiers/20/07/2007)
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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If aliens from outer space ever come and we show them our civilization and they make fun of it, we should say we were just kidding, that this isn't really our civilization, but a gag we hoped they would like. Then we tell them to come back in twenty years to see our REAL civilization. After that, we start a crash program of coming up with an impressive new civilization. Either that, or just shoot down the aliens as they're waving good-bye.
Jack Handey in Deep Thoughts
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires. Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces. Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other.
quote by John Buchan
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Tried To Be True
From baby to best with no second test
These little storms destroy you
Here is the fame they promised to give you
Taking the place of my hand now
Well did you try to be true
What separates me from you now
What separates me from you
Did you borrow the soul
The soul that you sell now
What does your conscience tell you
Where are the demons
Of your desires
Why does my love destroy you
I said I tried to be true
What separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
I said I tried, tried to be true
What separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
What separates me from you
(what separates me from you now)
I think its you now
Tell me where is the fame
Where is the fortune
Where is the world that denies you
Who is to blame
When my heart finally forfeits
To a road that will only misguide you
Well did we try to be true
What separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
Oh did we try, try to be true
(what separates me from you now)
(what separates me from you now)
It separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
It separates me from you
(what separates me from you now)
Its you
Baby
Yeah I bought my love a hunger
(I tried, tried to be true)
More precious than a stone
(I tried, tried to be true)
(where is the world that denies you)
All these fatal flowers
(I tried, tried to be true)
(where is the world that denies you)
Did I misguide you?
(tried to be true)
song performed by by Indigo Girls
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I do not believe that the values which the Western democracies consider essential to civilization can survive in a world rent by the international anarchy of nationalism and the economic anarchy of competitive enterprise.
quote by Arthur Henderson
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All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
quote by Henry Ellis
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Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other.
quote by James Thurber
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
quote by Jeremy Bentham
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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On Auto Systematic
On auto systematic.
Delighted I am,
To have a light that shines.
I had been one quite static...
And fanatic in lacking to feed,
My own needs.
I'm on auto systematic.
And programmed to have all by bolts,
Committed to a tight snug fit.
Sidetracked no longer my knack...
Or quick am I to trip.
I'm on auto systematic.
Sidetracked no longer my knack.
Auto systematic.
With a preference I keep in tact.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture, took place for the first time.
quote by James H. Breasted
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Much Deeper Than What Is Shown
There are layers of living one's life,
Complex.
That will not be easy to peel away to reveal...
What has been lived as one might suspect!
To scratch beneath a crust thought thin,
With a hope to match,
A few moments given...
To a belief thought easy to satisfy,
A curiosity to probe and pry...
Can not be applied!
Not to this specimen...
Thought to be light,
Of a wind...
One can stand against and defend.
There are layers of living one's life,
Complex.
That will not be easy to peel away to reveal...
What has been lived as one might suspect!
That which appears to sit alone as stone...
May show what's on a surface,
Something much deeper.
Much deeper...
Than what is shown!
Deeper, deeper still...
Than what is believed to be known!
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action.
quote by Jacques Ellul
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.
quote by John Buchan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Four years of world war, at a cost in human suffering which our minds are mercifully too limited to imagine, led to the very clear realization that international anarchy must be abandoned if civilization was to survive.
quote by Arthur Henderson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Western civilization, Christianity, decency are struggling for their very lives. In this worldwide civil war, race prejudice is our most dangerous enemy, for it is a disease at the very root of our democratic life.
quote by Mordecai Wyatt Johnson
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You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
quote by Walter Bagehot
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Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.
quote by Theodore Roosevelt
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There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
quote by Reinhold Niebuhr
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There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
quote by Erma Bombeck
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The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it. In fact, one of the inevitable influences of the use of force is to postpone Anarchy. The only thing that force can ever do for us is to save us from extinction, to give us a longer lease of life in which to try to secure Anarchy by the only methods that can ever bring it. But this advantage is always purchased at immense cost, and its attainment is always attended by frightful risk. The attempt should be made only when the risk of any other course is greater.
quote by Benjamin Tucker
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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