Pugnacity Quotes

“We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic-a moral code independent of religion-strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities?”

— Will Durant

“I have tried to keep some hold on the religion of my youth by interpreting its basic doctrines as symbols that gave popular expression to philosophic truths. I can rephrase "original sin" as man's inherited disposition to follow those instincts of pugnacity, sexual promiscuity, and greed which may have been necessary in the hunting stage of human history, but which need a variety of controls in an organized society that guarantees its members protection against violence, theft, and rape; we are born with the taint of ancestral passions in our blood.”

— Will Durant

“Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.”

— Sinclair Lewis

“Very much indeed of what we call moral education is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.”

— H.G. Wells

“D'Alembert was always surrounded by controversy ... he was the lightning rod which drew sparks from all the foes of the philosophes ... Unfortunately he carried this ... pugnacity into his scientific research and once he had entered a controversy, he argued his cause with vigour and stubbornness. He closed his mind to the possibility that he might be wrong ...”

— Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

“The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism.”

— William Ralph Inge

“There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

“There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.”

— George Bernard Shaw

“No community has ever yet passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism enabled it to found a nation, and its cupidity to establish and develop a commercial civilization.”

— George Bernard Shaw

“Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.”

— William James

“Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant with of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'.”

— Richard Dawkins