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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.

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
Self
Ultimately
Unstable
People
Actions
Disciplined
Difference
Restraint
Becomes
Internals
Differences
Internal
Society
Unnecessary
Action
External
Government
Stable
Restraints

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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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Each individual in a society is a nexus where innumerable relationships of this character intersect.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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There were people who said the Society of Cincinnati in the American revolution, of which George Washington was one of the shining lights, was a branch of the Illuminati.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.
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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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