Best 2527 quotes in «civilization quotes» category

But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.

But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness - each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked - each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.

But ultimately, the purpose of marriage is to transmit civilization to the next generation. There has never been an institution that does it as well as marriage, and that is marriage between a man and a woman.

But we must admit the possibility that continued investigation and experience will bring us ever nearer to that solemn moment, when the first man will rise from earth by means of wings, if only for a few seconds, and mark that historical moment which heralds the inauguration of a new era in our civilization.

But you have to understand, my beard is so nasty. I mean, it's the only beard in the history of Western civilization that makes Bob Dylan's beard look good.

By challenging anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, science fiction throws open the whole of civilization and its premises to constructive criticism.

By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any student of early culture proposing that the crude contemporary art of the early Babylonians is the product of a civilization earlier than that of the Nile.

By and large, the answer to the question "How do large institutions survive?" is "They don't!" The vast majority of large modern-day institutions - some of them extremely vital to the functioning of our complex civilization - simply fail to exist in the first place.

By putting business before every other manifestation of life, our mechanical and financial civilization has forgotten the chief business of life: namely, growth, reproduction, development. It pays infinite attention to the incubator-and it forgets the egg!

By nature, by necessity itself, [primitive man] is encyclopedic, while civilized man finds himself confined in the infinitely small regions of specialization.

By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

By working and living in New York, you are breathing Western civilization, continuously reminded of its benefits and its values.

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else.

California is now close to spending more on prisons than it does on higher education - surely the death warrant of a civilization.

California, that advance post of our civilization, with its huge aircraft factories, TV and film studios, automobile way of life... its flavourless cosmopolitanism, its charlatan philosophies and religions, its lack of anything old and well-tried rooted in tradition and character.

Canada may be fast-forwarding, jump starting, into a new pattern, a model of communication linkages, a civilization that is more than a grab for power and dominance, a place that could channel the fires of the global wirings, where political alliances are subject to electrical ebb and flow, and the alchemical cultivations of imagination and perception, of the self, could precail of the ideology of capital.

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

Cardinal Arithmetics is much older than Number Theory. People used to exchange things way before there were numbers. Expressing numbers like 762 is already a sign of a very advanced civilization.

Cars are the most central thing in America, in a lot of ways. They've probably influenced the way we live more than anything else, and yet every really big problem - whether it's the environment or who dictates the international economy because of oil - is all tied to cars. Ultimately, cars are bad for civilization. I don't know if they'll end us.

Casper Wyo., population 18,000 when I was born, was large enough to hold the surprises of civilization, but small enough that the prairie was close by - for some in our town, right out the front door - stretching on forever, under the great curving sky.

Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counterrevolutionaries and advocates of the status quo.

Certainly whatever climate change and global warming means, we've got a big issue here. Right now, this civilization or this period that we're in is probably going to need the resources off our planet, perhaps the resources from the asteroids, perhaps there will be some on the moon, perhaps some on Mars that we can utilize for our own uses here.

Change no man’s religion, change no man’s politics, interrupt the sovereignty of no nation. Instead, teach Man to use what he has and what he knows to the factual creation, within any political reference, of a civilization on Earth for the first time.

Champagne is the wine of civilization and the oil of government.

children are an embarrassment to a business civilization. A business society needs children for the same reason that a nomadic or a pastoral society needs them - to perpetuate itself. Unfortunately, however, children are of no use to a business society until they have almost reached physical maturity.

Chastity is the cement of civilization and progress. Without it there is no stability in society, and without it one cannot attain the Science of Life.

Christendom never came from an unbroken grave. It would have been buried in that grave, as Judas thought it was going to be, and as the Jews thought it was going to be, except there had been a resurrection from the dead. Then you can explain Christendom, churches, and literatures, if Christ rose again; but otherwise they cannot be explained at all. Our whole civilization rests on the broken Cross of the Master, and it is incredible that a civilization like this, in a world advancing steadily for eighteen centuries, has been founded on a lie.

Cities should function more like ecosystems, or even metabolisms. When we build, we should be thinking about how we can integrate into the ecosystems around us, but without sacrificing all the niceties of civilization like good restaurants, concert halls, and high-speed Internet access. I'm saying that partly tongue-in-cheek, but I'm also deadly serious. The future of technology is sustainable ecology.

Christianity has carried civilization along with it, whithersoever it has gone; and, as if to show that the latter does not depend on physical causes, some of the countries the most civilized in the day's of Augustus are now in a state of hopeless barbarism.

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression. The Church and the State have always fraternally united to exploit the people.

Cities are the crucible of civilization.

Civility isn't just some optional value in a multicultural, multistate democratic republic. Civility is the key to civilization.

Civilization and profit go hand in hand.

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.

Civilization begins with distillation

Civilization creates discontents; barbarism creates quick endings.

Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, 'What you are doing is none of my business' and 'What I am doing is none of your business.'

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology.

Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants.

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

Civilization is only a series of victories against nature.

Civilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of the primate. For primates we have been and primates we shall remain, however often we learn to find joy in a camellia on moss. This is the very purpose of education.

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.