# Quote — John Brunner, The Jagged Orbit

> “But what brought about this ‘decline of civilization’?” Conroy demanded. “It can’t just have been the introduction of these weapons you’ve been talking about, this System C equipment.”
>
> “The maximization of arms sales implied the maximization of inter-human hostility,” Madison/Gottschalk said. “All the existing sources of this phenomenon were tapped, and those proving particularly fruitful were patriotism, parochialism, xenophobia, ochlophobia, racial, religious and linguistic differences, and the so-called ‘gulf between the generations.’ It was found readily feasible to emphasize these pre-existent attitudes to the point where a System C integrated weaponry unit was so desirable among the informed populace that the possibility of another individual acquiring this virtually indestructible equipment sufficed to provoke an attack on him before he purchased one.”

- Author: [John Brunner](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner.md)
- Book: [The Jagged Orbit](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit.md)
- Page: 357
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Brunner#The_Jagged_Orbit_(1969)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/but-what-brought

## More from this book

> His brief and frustrating dialogue with them had convinced him that they must divide the human race into three categories: staff, patients and potential patients.

p. 73 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/his-brief-and.md)

> Western culture is undergoing a process of transition from guilt-oriented, with a conscience, to shame-oriented, with a morbid fear of being found out.

p. 10 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/western-culture-is-undergoing.md)

> It was his hope and ambition to cause many deaths. He was an arms salesman by choice, calm and even a little happy to see his products in such demand, capable of trying to clinch a sale at the bedside of a fresh corpse.

p. 163 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/it-was-his.md)