John Boyd Orr – 12 Quotes

12 Quotes by John Boyd Orr

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.

– John Boyd Orr

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

– John Boyd Orr

Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.

– John Boyd Orr

It is said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. It may well be that a war neurosis stirred up by propaganda of fear and hatred is the prelude to destruction.

– John Boyd Orr

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.

– John Boyd Orr

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

– 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.

– John Boyd Orr

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

– John Boyd Orr

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.

– John Boyd Orr

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.

– John Boyd Orr

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.

– John Boyd Orr

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.

– John Boyd Orr