The curse of every ancient civilization was that its men in the end became unable to fight. Materialism, luxury, safety, even sometimes an almost modern sentimentality, weakened the fibre of each civilized race in turn; each became in the end a nation of pacifists, and then each was trodden under foot by some ruder people that had kept that virile fighting power the lack of which makes all other virtues useless and sometimes even harmful.

He makes me change, he makes me want to dance round him, bewilder him, dazzle him, dumbfound him. He' so slow, so unimaginative, so lifeless. Like zinc white. I see it's a sort of tyranny he has over me. He forces me to be changeable, to act. To show off. The hateful tyranny of weak people.

G.P. said it once.

The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.

Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! YOU'VE READ ABOUT IT IN THE NEWSPAPERS! NOW, SHUDDER AS YOU OBSERVE, BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES, THAT MOST RAREAND RAGIC OF NATURE'S MISTAKES!

I GIVE YOU... <b>
<i>THE AVERAGE MAN!</i>
</b>

PHYSICALLY <b>
<i>UNREMARKABLE</i>
</b>, IT HAS <b>
<i>INSTEAD</i>
</b> A DEFORMED SET OF <b>
<i>VALUES.</i>
</b>

NOTICE THE <b>
<i>HIDEOUSLY BLOATED</i>
</b> SENSE OF <b>
<i>HUMANITY'S IMPORTANCE.</i>
</b> THE CLUB-FOOTED <b>
<i>SOCIAL CONSCIENCE</i>
</b> AND THE <b>
<i>WITHERED OPTIMISM.</i>
</b>

IT'S CERTAINLY NOT FOR THE <b>
<i>SQUEAMISH</i>
</b> IS IT?

MOST <b>
<i>REPULSIVE</i>
</b> OF <b>
<i>ALL</i>
</b>, ARE ITS <b>
<i>FRAIL</i>
</b> AND <b>
<i>USELESS</i>
</b> NOTIONS OF <b>
<i>ORDER</i>
</b> AND <b>
<i>SANITY.</i>
</b> IF TOO MUCH <b>
<i>WEIGHT</i>
</b> IS PLACED UPON THEM...

... THEY <b>
<i>SNAP.</i>
</b>

HOW DOES IT <b>
<i>LIVE</i>
</b>, I HEAR YOU ASK?

HOW DOES THIS POOR, PATHETIC SPECIMEN <b>
<i>SURVIVE</i>
</b> IN TODAY'S <b>
<i>HARSH</i>
</b> AND <b>
<i>IRRATIONAL</i>
</b> WORLD?

THE SAD ANSWER <b>
<i>IS</i>
</b> 'NOT VERY <b>
<i>WELL.</i>
</b>

The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.

Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.

"One of the main weaknesses of mankind is the average man's familiarity with the word "impossible." He knows all the rules which will NOT work. He knows all the things which CANNOT be done."

A man with a machine and inadequate culture is a pestilence.

Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control,
constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave.
The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed
down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our
institutions.

The old man said, ‘You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.

Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking all their gaudy visions and hallucinations seriously.

The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on - I am not too sure.

The alienation of man thus appeared as the fundamental evil of capitalist society.