Best 2527 quotes in «civilization quotes» category

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.

I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based.

I am interested in climate change and other topics too. But this thing is so huge, in the worst case we are talking about the end of our civilization.

I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.

I am not sure whether ethical absolutes exist. But I am sure that we have to act as if they existed or civilization perishes.

I am studying ancient civilizations, trying to find what happened to them, finding out why they went into a decline, why they died.

I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.

I am well convinced that Aerial Navigation will form a most prominent feature in the progress of civilization.

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.

I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our modern civilization. But I believe they should be so regulated that they shall act for the interests of the community as a whole.

I believe in courtesy. It is the way we avoid hurting people's feelings. She thought that maybe, just maybe, western civilization was in decline because people did not take time to take tea at four o'clock.

I believe that science is the engine of prosperity, that if you look around at the wealth of civilization today, it's the wealth that comes from science.

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government, but civilization itself.

I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion, but it is a civilization bent on destroying ours.

I believe very firmly that indigenous populations had a really good, intuitive understanding of why we're here. And we're trying to gain that same understanding through psychology and intellect in modern civilization.

I can hardly believe what these 12 caricatures [about Prophet Muhammad] have caused in the world. We Danes feel like we have been placed in a scene in the wrong movie. But I don't see the fight as a clash of civilizations. Rather, we must focus on avoiding exactly this type of conflict. We have to return to dialogue, to mutual understanding and to an acknowledgement of freedom of opinion.

I consider that there are different degrees of civilization and there are many different ways of expressing it. But one is civilized or is not.

... I cannot think a civilization worth having that does not encourage and enable its subjects to spend something, not extorted by governments but freely given to keep wretchedness at least from the streets they walk through day by day.

I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.

Ideas about a person's place in society, his role, lifestyle, and ego qualities will lose their hold as the cohesive forces in society disintegrate. Subculture values will proliferate to such a bewildering extent that a whole new class of professionals will arise to control them. Such a Transmutation Technology will deal in fashions, in ways of being. Lifestyle consultants will become the new priests of our civilizations. They will be the new magicians.

Ideas are the factors that lift civilization. They create revolutions. There is more dynamite in an idea than in many bombs.

I did have the resource of having taught Greek mythology and the history of Western civilization, and you can go back into the plays of Aeschylus and follow what happens when people seek revenge, and there are people plucking their eyes out. And Greek mythology is filled with all kinds of monsters and whatnot.

I'd like - inviting aliens and have them observe what we do because so much of what we do that we take for granted will just be weird or extraordinary or just plain dumb when observed by an alien from another civilization.

I didn't go to bookshops to buy. That's a little bourgeois. I went because they were civilized places. It made me happy there were people who sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote and there were other people who devoted their lives to making those words into books. It was lovely. Like standing in the middle of civilization.

I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable on earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization.

I do not believe that the values which the Western democracies consider essential to civilization can survive in a world rent by the international anarchy of nationalism and the economic anarchy of competitive enterprise.

I do not think there is such a thing as a "clash of civilizations." When I say that Muslims as Muslims cannot be represented in the West, I was being ironic, and also referring to the fact that ninety percent of the time when people talk about "the problem of Muslims" in the West, it is to complain about the fact that Muslims have not "integrated.

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

I do not think that the nerve of the modern child is any too good; how can one expect it, brought up as they are amongst all the horrors of civilization. The 'daring' child who used to be common enough, is seldom met nowadays.

I do believe that the future of civilization belongs to those who would lay emphasis on working together instead of talking about clash of civilizations.

I do not speak with any fondness but the language of coolest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town whichwas appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America.

I don't actually believe in a clash of civilizations. I believe in a clash of the civilized and the noncivilized.

I don't believe that it's inconsistent to be suspicious of people and also be totally comfortable with deploying the technology, because you know its fractal potential. It's a vote for politics. It's a vote for the will to politics. There will be people, a one percent of people, that can use this stuff effectively, develop it, implement it. That's why it's necessary. That's why civilization exists, so those few people can exercise incredible techniques.

I don't care two hoots about civilization. I want to wander in the wild.

I encourage all of you to discover ever more fully in the Eucharist, the sacrament of Christ's sacrificial love, the inspiration and strength needed to work ever more generously for the spread of God's Kingdom and the growth of the civilization of love.

I don't want to have anything to do with the government. And yet if we don't have any regulations, there goes civilization, there goes security, and there goes protecting you against what people are going to sell you.

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilizations escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.

I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible to civilization. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that the reformation must be worked.

If art is to flourish in the twenty-first century, it must renew its moral authority by rededicating itself to life. It must be an enriching, ennobling and vital partner in the public pursuit of civilization. It should be a majestic presence in everyday life just as it was in the past.

If a superior alien civilization sent us a message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades', would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here - we'll leave the lights on'? Probably not - but this is more or less what is happening with AI.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

If civilization is going to survive, business and policy-makers must move on, to find within themselves more developed emotions than fear or greed.

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

If during their education our youths become alienated from their language, history, ancestors, culture and civilization, it means there is a very serious educational problem there.

If civilization ever achieves a higher standard of what constitutes normality, it will have been the neurotic who led the way.