Quotes About Civilization

Humans have lived for much, much longer than the approximately 10,000 years of settled agricultural civilization.

I think almost everything about humans and human civilization is explained better by evolution than anything else.

Trascendencia, enfermedad propiamente europea.

Probabilmente qualche altro inquilino si era accorto di quell'acqua che scorreva fuori da quella porta, ma si era ben guardato dall'avvisare qualcuno, il portiere: la civiltà di massa ha questo pregio, che ciascuno può annegare liberamente senza che gli altri gli diano fastidio nel tentativo di salvarlo. È in fondo una forma di delicatezza e di rispetto dell'opinione altrui di morire da sé.

No other civilization anywhere in history ever moved in this direction — only the West, under the influence of Christian principles. Along with equality came the idea of inalienable, God-given rights, which led to the Enlightenment emphasis on life, liberty, property, and virtue.

The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no .

It is customary for emperors who listen to bishops to hurl insults at the very civilization that created them.

Phuong had kept us a table at the edge of the dance-floor and the orchestra was playing some tune which had been popular in Paris five years ago. Two Vietnamese couples were dancing, small, neat, aloof, with an air of civilization we couldn't match. (I recognized one, an accountant from the Banque de

We are used to things starting out small and simple and then progressing--evolving--to become ever more complex and sophisticated, so this is naturally what we expect to find on archaeological sites. It upsets our carefully structured ideas of how civilizations should behave, how they should mature and develop, when we are confronted by a case like Göbekli Tepe that starts out perfect at the beginning and then slowly devolves until it is just a pale shadow of its former self.

in order that the lower edge of each stone should hitch like a pawl into a ratchet cut into the top of the walls; hence no stone can press on the one below it, so as to cause a cumulative pressure all down the roof; and each stone is separately upheld by the side walls which it lies across.27 And this was the work of a people whose civilization had only recently emerged from neolithic hunter-gathering?

Olmecs had worked out the principle of the wheel

I looked in depth into the ancient and 100 per cent Indian origins of Vedic civilisation in my book Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age. There was no such thing as an Aryan invasion of India. That whole racist idea is completely bust.

The answer to the mystery is of course obvious but, because it is repellent to the prevailing cast of modern thinking, it is seldom considered. Egyptian civilization was not a 'development', it was a legacy.

Hapgood's theory of earth-crust displacement

the evidence suggested that the Incas had often functioned as the restorers of these structures rather than their original builders.

Eight thousand years is a very long time but

No pyramids of comparable quality were ever built again.

They understood the universe in ways we never will. We can't unlock their secrets—but now, apparently, we can destroy all they ever made. That's what I call progress.

Let me tell you a secret, Caitlin. We're still in the cave. It's just bigger, and we wear nicer clothes. We make alliances and try to be civil, we save the weak instead of leaving them out in the cold to die. . .

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. —Aristotle

Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.

India is about six times the size of France," he went on, as the glass of alcohol and a bowl of curried snacks arrived at our table. "But it has almost twenty times the population. Twenty times! Believe me, if there were a billion Frenchmen living i n such a crowded space, there would be rivers of blood. Rivers o f blood! And, as everyone knows, we French are the most civilised people in Europe. Indeed, in the whole world. No, no, without love, India would be impossible.

Civilization is submission, in a good cause.

The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.