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

More quotes by Carroll Quigley

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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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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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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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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
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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.
Carroll Quigley
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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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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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Hitler's economic revolution in Germany had reduced financial considerations to a point where they played no role in economic or political decisions
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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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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.
Carroll Quigley
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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.
Carroll Quigley
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To this day the Arab influence is evident in southern Italy, northern Africa and, above all, in Spain.
Carroll Quigley
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Even today few scientists and perhaps even fewer nonscientists realize that science is a method and nothing else.
Carroll Quigley
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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.
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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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.
Carroll Quigley
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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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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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Each individual in a society is a nexus where innumerable relationships of this character intersect.
Carroll Quigley
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Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.
Carroll Quigley