Quote#Politics & Power
Civilisation is a conspiracy. What value would your police be if…
Quote byJohn Buchan · 1875–1940
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night".
English (original)
Civilisation is a conspiracy. What value would your police be if every criminal could find a sanctuary across the Channel, or your law courts, if no other tribunal recognised their decisions? Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences. And it will succeed till the day comes when there is another compact to strip them bare.
— John Buchan
More from John Buchan
The Simple Life is the last refuge of complicated and restless souls.
The secret of life is to find out what one really wants.
The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things.
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.
In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.