All Men Are Enemies Quotes

“Just now I was thinking that I'd died and had to come to life again, had to build up a life myself. Only the new edifice has to be built with the ruins of the old. Or rather, I feel like a tree that has been blasted level with the ground, with only the roots still living. Some even of the roots are dead, some I have to kill, the rest have to grow again somehow.”
― Richard Aldington, All Men Are Enemies

“Let's get rid of abstractions-they don't exist. I agree about duties, but I don't believe it is a duty to try to arrange other people's lives for them in accordance with abstract principles, however well-meant and high-sounding. I don't believe in trying to reform the world. The thing for me is to live my own life as fully as possible. If I can “ improve " myself then I've done something towards reforming humanity. My relation with the beauty of the world, this glorious O, is my own affair, my religion if you like. And as to my duty to others, it's to men and women, not to Man and Woman”
― Richard Aldington, All Men Are Enemies

“For Antony it was a moment of pure loss. If 'England' had meant anything it had meant the ideal of a relation between natural leaders and followers, duties increasing with privileges. Now they doubted themselves, they abdicated-they were still honest enough for that-because they knew they were inadequate to the situation. The younger, more insolent ones might go on trying, but they'd fail. They could no longer control the huge masses, those terrifying, almost mechanical masses who were one huge smoulder of resentment. The ideal of the gentleman was as dead as the reality.”
― Richard Aldington, All Men Are Enemies

“The only news he wanted to hear was that
people had become a little sensible and decent and peace-
ful; he disliked this Cup-Tie attitude, in which people
took sides for the sake of excitement, and rooted for
their team to win without any sense of responsibility.
This passion for vicarious belligerence! Obviously
neither of them really believed that anything unpleasant
would happen to them, and the bogey of being stoned by
strikers was only evoked for the sake of a little uncostly
excitement.”
― Richard Aldington, All Men Are Enemies

“There shall be no more gods; there shall be no more quiet and holy places of the earth; and the sea shall be filled with our dirty works. Your women shall breed like sows, and you shall work like robots. You shall value nothing for its own sake, but only for its market value. As for living, the machines will do that for you. In the morning you shall say, Would God it evening; and in the evening, Would God it were morning.”
― Richard Aldington, All Men Are Enemies