Our shouting is louder than our actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
This is our tragedy.
In short
We wear the cape of civilization
But our souls live in the stone age.
---Nizar Qabbani, poet and diplomat (1923-1998)

(52:6.6) Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war.

(70:1.22) Thus did warfare gradually evolve from the primitive man hunt to the somewhat more orderly system of the later-day "civilized" nations. But only slowly does the social attitude of amity displace that of enmity.

(81:6.16) Live and growing languages insure the expansion of civilized thinking and planning.

(87:5.14)  And even today the civilized races are cursed with the belief in signs, tokens, and other superstitious remnants of the advancing ghost cult of old.

     Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani was a Syrian diplomat, poet and publisher. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, feminism, religion, and Arab nationalism. Qabbani is one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world, and is considered to be Syria's National Poet.