Top 26 Quotes by John Boyd Orr

Though the general principles of statecraft have survived the rise and fall of empires, every increase in knowledge has brought about changes in the political, economic, and social structure.

The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

Our civilization is now in the transition stage between the age of warring empires and a new age of world unity and peace.

As I have tried to show, science, in producing the airplane and the wireless, has created a new international political environment to which governments must adjust their foreign policies.

We are now physically, politically, and economically one world and nations so interdependent that the absolute national sovereignty of nations is no longer possible.

Empires won by conquest have always fallen either by revolt within or by defeat by a rival.

When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions.

In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.

In the last fifty years science has advanced more than in the 2,000 previous years and given mankind greater powers over the forces of nature than the ancients ascribed to their gods.

Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope.