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Quotes About Civilization

We have been shirking too long, and that's unworthy of a great civilization. To see off the new Dark Ages will be tough and demanding. The alternative will be worse.
~ Mark Steyn
Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it's a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. Atheistic humanism became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumanism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction.
~ Mark Steyn
You can live as free men, but if you choose not to, your society will surely die.
~ Mark Steyn
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
~ Mark Twain
Like me, they were alive at the moment—today's samples from the current batch of Cro-Magnon man. There were almost five billion of us specimens alive that morning in 1982. We who were awake were a multitude trampling the continents for our day in the light—feeling our lives and stirring about, building a better world a jot, or not—and soon the continents would roll us under, and new sets of people would trample us.
~ Annie Dillard
We are civilized generation number 500 or so, counting from 10,000 years ago when we settled down. We are Homo sapiens generation number 7,500, counting from 150,000 years ago when our species presumably arose. And we are human generation number 125,000, counting from the earliest Homo species. Yet how can we see ourselves as only a short-term replacement cast for a long-running show, when a new batch of birds flies around singing, and new clouds move?
~ Annie Dillard
When the State withers, humanity flowers.
~ Anthony Burgess
We only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet.
~ Anthony Burgess
Civilized my syphilised yarbles. Music always sort of sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me like feel like old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and blitzen and have vecks and ptitsas creeching away in my ha ha power.
~ Anthony Burgess
There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.
~ Anthony Trollope
Antes de retornar à cultura, constato que o mundo tem fome e que não se preocupa com a cultura; e que é de um modo artificial que se pretende dirigir para a cultura pensamentos voltados apenas para a fome.
~ Antonin Artaud
Un traduttore qualificato dovrebbe essere in grado non solo di tradurre letteralmente, ma di tradurre i termini, anche concettuali, di una determinata cultura nazionale nei termini di un'altra cultura nazionale, cioè un tale traduttore dovrebbe conoscere criticamente due civiltà ed essere in grado di far conoscere l'una all'altra servendosi del linguaggio storicamente determinato di quella civiltà alla quale fornisce il materiale d'informazione.
~ Antonio Gramsci
The Catholic Church was the bulwark of the country's conservative forces, the foundation of what the right defined as Spanish civilization. Not surprisingly, the outside world had a fixed impression of Spain as a deeply religious country. The jest of the Basque philosopher Unamuno, that in Spain even atheists were Catholic, was taken seriously. Centuries of fanatical superstition enforced by the Inquisition had engraved this image on European minds.
~ Antony Beevor
Man is by nature a political animal.
~ Aristotle
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
~ Aristotle
Man is a political animal. A man who lives alone is either a Beast or a God
~ Aristotle
If there are two definitive features of ancient Greek civilization, they are loquacity and competition.
~ Aristotle
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law & justice he is the worst.
~ Aristotle
Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends.
~ Aristotle
Uygarl??? tamamen yok etmek isteyenler anarÅŸistlerdir. Bütün kimyac?lar, profesörler, bilim ve edebiyat adamlar? anarÅŸisttir. Ama toplum onlar? cezaland?rmaz, çünkü adli düzen yok olmuÅŸtur. KiÅŸilere sald?r? bile art?k mümkün deÄŸildir çünkü her vatanda??n üstünde elektrikli korunma cihazlar? vard?r.
~ Armand Mattelart
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion
~ Arthur C. Clark
Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.
~ Arthur C. Clarke
Civilization and Religion are incompatible" and "Faith is believing what you know isn't true.
~ Arthur C. Clarke
After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization.
~ Arthur C. Clarke