Best 2527 quotes in «civilization quotes» category

I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human. . . . We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom.

I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

I have no doubt that historians will conclude that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans on the triumph of the government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution.

I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

I have tried to answer the question which sent me to Samoa: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?

I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her (Britain) say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.

I know a whole generation has been raised on the notion of multiculturalism; that all civilizations are just different. No! Not always. Sometimes things are better! Rule of law is better than autocracy and theocracy; equality of the sexes, better; protection of minorities, better; free speech, better; free elections, better; free appliances with large purchases, better! Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.

I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities.

I know this, and I know it from actual experience in the Orient, that the progress of modern Christian civilization has largely depended on the earnest hard work of the Christian missions of every denomination.

I know of no civilization that tolerates or justifies violence, terrorism, or injustice. There is no civilization that justifies the killing of innocent people. Those who are invoking cultural relativism are really using that as an excuse for violating human rights and to put a cultural mask on the face of what they're doing.

I know something about the civilization of China, with my background, obviously, and I think I know something about American history. But that's about all. And I've traveled all over the world, and for a long time I didn't know very much about it, really.

I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.

I look forward to an america in which commands respect throughout the world, not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world in which we will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.

I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.

Imagination is the most powerful force in the universe.

Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text.

I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles," he said. "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization -- that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men's souls.

Imagine what things would be like if the news media actually sided with civilization.

Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.

Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear--civilization's fear of nature, men's fear of women, power's fear of powerlessness. Man's subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.

I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.

In a culture that gives men irresponsible power and women powerless responsibility, the advancement of civilization cannot be a serious goal.

In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

In an automobile civilization, which was one of constant motion and activity, there was almost no time to think; in a television one, there is small desire.

In any case, in so far as our knowledge of the universe carries us, the advent of civilization for the first time on our globe represents the highest ascent of the life processes to which evolution had anywhere attained.

Inarticulate wretches have been behind most of the major advances in civilization. If Vincent Van Gogh had been able to get on with his neighbours, then he might have become an excellent painter-decorator, and received a big turn out at his funeral, and that would be that. But the genes wouldn't let him.

In China's thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today.

Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization.

India is a civilization with a history that is thousands of years old.The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

In early historical civilization, lunar symbols wove together three major metaphorical concepts. The first is the idea of fertility. The moon controls the tides of both water and blood – the sacred fluids of the early religions. The second is the concept of periodic rebirth, symbolized by the moon’s monthly waning and renewal. The third is the notion of continually repeating cycles of change.

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed.

In fact, the 20th century I think was the most fascinating century and the whole of man civilization because so much happened.

In his scientific genius, man has wrought material miracles and has transformed his world. He has harnassed nature and has developed great civilizations. But he has never learned very well how to live with himself. The values he has created have been predominantly materialistic; his spiritual values have lagged far behind. He has demonstrated little spiritual genius and has made little progress toward the realization of human brotherhood. In the contemporary atomic age, this could prove man's fatal weakness.

In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers.

In Kali yuga, whole atmosphere is surcharged with faithlessness, Material sense gratification is standard of civilization.

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

Innumerable conditions must be exquisitely optimized for the support of humanity and of civilization. Many of them are highly time variable. Evidence showing that a wide variety of independent conditions all reached optimality during the identical narrow epoch when human beings appeared on the cosmic and terrestrial scene testifies of supernatural design and purpose rather than mere coincidence.

In our civilization, there are permanent forms which are part of every epoch and every culture. They are not especially difficult to detect. A minimal knowledge of physics, astrophysics, and perhaps mathematics, brings to light certain patterns that make these subjects easier to understand. It is striking to see the extreme similarity between these scientific propositions and the forms that recur in all times, places and civilizations.

In our present high state of civilization, people are so much alike, that anything at all odd comes on one with the freshness and character of an antique coin among smooth shillings.

In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.

In our western civilization we have the glorious example, the great standard of perfection and the teachings of the Christ to guide us. He acts for us as Mediator between our personality and our Soul.

In principle as a philosophy, a model of organising society, Communism has to be respected. As regards the use of certain methods to advance social justice and greater regulation by the state, there are certain methods that are useful. What we need is a new society, a new civilization and convergence of all that is best in both [Communism and Capitalism]

Insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat.

Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally.

In The Ecology of Freedom, my critique of what is called civilization and industrial society is massive, and my attack upon [Karl] Marx's commitment to it as a necessary stage in human progress and the domination of nature is very sharp.