Quotes from Carroll Quigley

To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time. But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual ability and training, a self conscious awareness of what one is doing, experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all, perspective.

Talk comes from ideology but action comes from outlook.

The basis of social relationships is reciprocity: if you cooperate with others, others will cooperate with you.

We might say that the whole recent controversy between conservatism and liberalism is utterly wrongheaded and ignorant. Since the true role of conservatism must be to conserve the tradition of our society, and since that tradition is a liberal tradition, the two should be solely allied in their aim at common goals. So long as liberals and conservatives have as their primary goals to defend interests and to belabor each other for partisan reasons, they cannot do this. Tragedy & Hope, p. 1232

It might be pleasant just to give up, live in the present, enjoying existential personal experiences, living like lotus-eaters from our amazing productive system, without personal responsibility, self-discipline, or thought about the future. But this is impossible, because the productive system could itself collapse, and our external enemies would soon destroy us. Tragedy & Hope p. 1275

this book is almost inexcusably lengthy. For this I must apologize, with the excuse that I did not have time to make it shorter

For example, I've talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty generally in this group.

For the West, even as it nominally ceases to be Christian, and most obviously in those areas which have, at least nominally, drifted furthest from Christianity, still has many of the basic Christian traits of love, humility, social concern, humanitarianism, brotherly care, and future preference, however detached these traits may have become from the Christian idea of deity or of individual salvation in a spiritual eternity. T&H p. 1120

The key to Carroll Quigley's success as a teacher and as a scholar lies in his creative intellect, the depth of his perceptions, and the wide interdisciplinary range of this interests, which encompasses the fields of history, economics, philosophy, and science. An iconoclast and a person of insatiable curiosity, as well as keenness of mind, Dr. Quigley stands apart from the specialized scholar who plows diligently in the rutted grooves of narrow disciplines.

But Quigley's interdisciplinary interests resulted not from dilletantism, but from a distrust of reductionism as a means of understanding society and an insatiable curiosity he synthesized into a revolutionary holistic epistemology.

I feel glad I am a Christian, glad I am without allegiance to any bloc, party, or groups, except to our Judeo-Christian tradition (modified by science and common sense). God keep you all and cause you to grow.

For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

I am a 'macrohistorian' specializing in the processes of change in advanced societies, with a special interest in methodological questions

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." There are no means available to measure the intellectual impact and the far-reaching effects of his influence on the minds of his students. For this reason it is impossible to give Dr. Quigley recognition commensurate with his value to thousands of Georgetown students since his arrival here from Harvard in the Fall of 1941.

Of these the earliest, Sink Civilization, rose in the valley of the Yellow River after 2000 b.c, culminated in the Chin and Han empires after 200 b.c, and was largely destroyed by Ural-Altaic invaders after a.d. 400. From this Sinic Civilization, in the same way in which Classical

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.

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.

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.

Instead, there were a variety of controls of which some could be influenced by bankers, some could be influenced by the government, and some could hardly be influenced by either.

Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs.