social theory

there is one path that drives for the production of a supreme specimen. It is the path that governs higher life; survival and reproduction are only side effects of this path. Life is at most basic, struggle for ownership of space.

when you look at life of true nomads who are always on the move and in open space, they never engage in the kind of depressive introspection and questioning of life that you only see in settled and civilized peoples.

monotheism overreached. It made such grand claims… and when these claims were abandoned it left people with the impression that there really is nothing besides “science,” which of course, nobody really understands, because it’s nothing but a method.

Toynbee expounds the principle that times of trouble or rapid change produce militarism, and it is militarism that produces empire and expansion.

If there can be any defense of civilization it is this, that historically it gave a class the full or nearly full benefits of the free life of the steppe and forest and mountain while ridding them of some of its inconveniences—at the price, of course, of misery for the vast majority.

Everything for oneself, everything for personal utility: a pleasure in cruelty toward the weak and toward animals. This is the end-result of thousands of years of “civilization.”

Men seek in play the difficulties and demands—both intellectual and physical—they no longer find in work.