Pugnacity Quotes

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.

Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us.

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.

When we act pugnaciously, and injuriously, and angrily, and rudely, to what level have we degenerated? To the level of the wild beasts. Well, the fact is that some of us are wild beasts of a larger size, while others are little animals, malignant and petty.

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

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.

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

A politician weakly and amiably in the right, is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.

It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.

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

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