Primitive Quotations | Page 2

The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man.

It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.

If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and put aside in your life.

the emotions at death, as at birth, are instinctive and primitive.

When primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature.

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

There can be no doubt ... of our dependence upon forces beyond our control. Primitive man was so impotent in the face of these forces that g , especially in an unfavorable natural environment, fear became a dominant attitude, and, as the old saying goes, fear created gods.

I do not give the honorific name of 'poetry' to the primitive and the unaccomplished.

Socialism is a return to primitive conditions.

Just as primitive man believed himself to stand face to face with demons and believed that could he but know their names he would become their master, so is contemporary man faced by this incomprehensible, which disorders his calculations. "If I can but grasp it, if I can but cognise it", so he thinks, "I can make it my servant.

To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions, while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated.

Condemned and executioner are not coupled in a primitive rite.

Let us shun everything, which might tend to efface the primitive lineaments of our individuality. Let us reflect that each one of us is a thought of God.

Trust, in its most primitive form, is based on authenticity, not flawlessness.

Ireland regards sex, when she regards it at all, with an entirely primitive and practical eye.

Rock is gut level and it just gets to people. I think there's far too much emphasis on intellectualization, especially in rock 'n' roll which is a primitive form.

It's the same thing as a primitive of Africans, Indians, nomads or whatever - when they start getting up and doing their ritual and doing the dance, it's just what's coming through. It's the spirit. Rock 'n' roll is still primitive.

Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

If we put together all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts.

He who shall introduce into the public affairs the principles of a primitive Christianity, will change the face of the world.

The Bible is a collection of honorable, but primitive legends which are still nevertheless pretty childish.

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose -- some for cash and some for ''political influence.'' We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. ''Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?''

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike-and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

I offer images- I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached- like the Doors, right? But we can only open the doors, we can't drag people through. I can't free them unless they want to be free. Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up. A person has to be willing to give up everything- not just wealth. All the bullshit that he's been taught- all society's brainwashing. You have to let go of all that to get to the other side. Most people aren't willing to do that.

They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.

It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.

The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.