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It is clear that every civilization undergoes a process of historical change. We can see that a civilization comes into existence, passes through a long experience, and eventually goes out of existence.

Carroll Quigley

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Carroll Quigley
Age: 66 †
Born: 1910
Born: November 9
Died: 1977
Died: January 3
Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Professor
Boston
Massachusetts
Comes
Passes
Experience
Eventually
Change
Historical
Every
Civilization
Long
Goes
Existence
Clear
Process
Undergoes

More quotes by Carroll Quigley

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It is not easy to tear any event out of the context of the universe in which it occurred without detaching from it some factor that influenced it.
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The West believes that man and the universe are both complex and that the apparently discordant parts of each can be put into a reasonably workable arrangement with a little good will, patience, and experimentation.
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When the business interests... pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally.
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When we approach history, we are dealing with a conglomeration of irrational continua. Those who deal with history by nonrational processes are the ones who make history, the actors in it.
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Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.
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The very idea that there is some kind of conflict between science and religion is completely mistaken. Science is a method for investigating experience... Religion is the fundamental, necessary internalization of our system of more permanent values.
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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.
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The problem of meaning today is the problem of how the diverse and superficially self-contradictory experiences of men can be put into a consistent picture that will provide contemporary man with a convincing basis from which to live and to act.
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To this day the Arab influence is evident in southern Italy, northern Africa and, above all, in Spain.
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It is also in theory, conceivable that some universal empire some day might cover the whole globe, leaving no external barbarians to serve as invaders.
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Each central banksought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.
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The Council on Foreign Relations is the American branch of a society which originated in England ... [and] ... believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established.
Carroll Quigley
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When goods are exchanged between countries, they must be paid for by commodities or gold. They cannot be paid for by the notes, certificates, and checks of the purchaser's country, since these are of value only in the country of issue.
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In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures.
Carroll Quigley
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By the winter of 1945-1946, the Russian peoples were being warned of the dangers from the West
Carroll Quigley
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It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists.
Carroll Quigley
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The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers.
Carroll Quigley
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The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups.
Carroll Quigley
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I came into history from a primary concern with mathematics and science. This has been a tremendous help to me as a person and as a historian, although it must be admitted it has served to make my historical interpretations less conventional than may be acceptable of many of my colleagues in the field.
Carroll Quigley
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Our political organization, based as it is on an eighteenth-century separation of powers and on a nineteenth-century nationalist state, is generally recognized to be semiobselete.
Carroll Quigley