# Quote — Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina

> The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests, according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief. A man who saw clearly and with open eyes and was then living could see how this miracle took place and how the whole of a society could, in a single day, be transformed. In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented.

- Author: [Ivo Andric](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric.md)
- Book: [The Bridge on the Drina](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric/the-bridge-on-the-drina.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ivo_Andri%C4%87#The_Bridge_on_the_Drina_(1945)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [human nature](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature.md), [evil](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evil.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric/the-bridge-on-the-drina/the-people-were

## More from this book

> Perhaps this impure infidel faith that puts everything in order, cleans everything up, repairs and embellishes everything only in order suddenly and violently to demolish and destroy, might spread through the whole world; it might make of all God's world an empty field for its senseless building and criminal destruction, a pasturage for its insatiable hunger and incomprehensible demands? Anything might happen. But one thing could not happen; it could not be that great and wise men of exalted soul who would raise lasting buildings for the love of God, so that the world should be more beautiful and man live in it better and more easily, should everywhere and for all time vanish from this earth. Should they too vanish, it would mean that the love of God was extinguished and had disappeared from the world. That could not be.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric/the-bridge-on-the-drina/perhaps-this-impure.md)

Topics: [faith](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/faith.md), [god](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/god.md)

> You listen and live prudently, in fact you do not live at all, but work and save and are burdened with cares; and so your whole life passes. Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing turns upside down; times come when the world mocks at reason, when the Church shuts its doors and is silent, when authority becomes mere brute force, when they who have made their money honestly and with the sweat of their brows lose both their time and their money, and the violent win the game. No one recognizes your efforts and there is no one to help or advise you how to keep what you have earned and saved. Can this be? Surely this cannot be?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric/the-bridge-on-the-drina/you-listen-and.md)

Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md)

> The town and its outskirts were only the settlements which always and inevitably grow up around an important centre of communications and on either side of great and important bridges.
>
> Here also in time the houses crowded together and the settlements multiplied at both ends of the bridge. The town owed its existence to the bridge and grew out of it as if from an imperishable root.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric/the-bridge-on-the-drina/the-town-and.md)