John Boyd Orr

“Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.”

“During the last war when there was a market for everything that could be produced, the production capacity of Canada and the United States, which were outside the battle area, increased one hundred percent.”

“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.”

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

“In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants.”

“However difficult it may be to bring it about, some form of world government, with agreed international law and means of enforcing the law, is inevitable.”

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

“After the First World War the economic problem was no longer one of production. It was the problem of finding markets to get the output of industry and agriculture dispersed and consumed.”

“When the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century brought a rapid increase in wealth, the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth they were creating was conceded only after riots and strikes.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nearly every country in the world is now becoming industrialized as rapidly as it can.”

“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.”

“Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction.”

“The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.”

“If the views I have expressed be right, we can think of our civilization evolving with the growth of knowledge from small wandering tribes to large settled law.”

“There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty.”

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

“The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion.”