Quotes About Civilization

Even if we're among the lucky few who benefit from civilization, we find ourselves curiously unsatisfied, plagued by stress, worry, and conflict... Like the addict who believes against all evidence that what he can't give up won't lead to suffering and death, our culture adheres to its ideas in spite of ample, clear evidence they will lead to suffering and death.

The civilized people in the world, the ones who hide behind culture and art and politics… and even the law, they're the ones to watch out for. They've got that perfect disguise goin' for them, you know? But they're the most vicious. They're the most dangerous people on earth.

It was simply a belief in the idea that an enlightened society did not kill its own.

The truth is that civilization does not protect us from wild animals. It attempts, however imperfectly, to protect us from ourselves.

Today we are surrounded by man and his creations. Man is inescapable, everywhere on the globe, and nature is a fantasy, a dream of the past, long gone.

The meaning of these discoveries has not yet been sorted out, but it is certainly now impossible to regard the prehistoric Europeans as savages idly awaiting the blessings of Eastern civilization.

CivilizaÈ›ia nu ne ÎNDEPÄ'RTEAZÄ' de natur?. CivilizaÈ›ia ne PROTEJEAZÄ' de natur?.

If you imagined the human lifespan of sixty years was compressed to a day, then eighty million years would still be 3,652 years—older than the pyramids.

civilization doesn't separate us from nature, Ted. Civilization protects us from nature. Because

Enhanced longevity is essential for civilization. In every society in the past, the greatest association with societal and personal GDP increases is longevity—even much greater than schooling.

As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.

Why are you not smarter? It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart. They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave. But you two. We three. We're free.

our modern civilization returns exceedingly little of what it borrows. -Martin Renner

But I contend that most of what we're consuming today is no longer, strictly speaking, food at all, and how we're consuming it—in the car, in front of the TV, and, increasingly, alone—is not really eating, at least not in the sense that civilization has long understood the term.

The shared meal is no small thing. It is a foundation of family life, the place where our children learn the art of conversation and acquire the habits of civilization: sharing, listening, taking turns, navigating differences, arguing without offending.

Apparently it is easier, or at least a lot more profitable, to change a disease of civilization into a lifestyle than it is to change the way that civilization eats.

Claude Lévi-Strauss described the work of civilization as the process of transforming the raw into the cooked—nature into culture.

there is a school of archaeological thought that contends that the reason humanity turned to agriculture was to secure a more reliable supply of alcohol, not food.

Diabetes is well on its way to becoming normalized in the West—recognized as a whole new demographic and so a major marketing opportunity. Apparently it is easier, or at least a lot more profitable, to change a disease of civilization into a lifestyle than it is to change the way that civilization eats.

Saddam Hussein was fascinated by ancient Babylon and Assyria. He made money available to protect and develop the great archaeological sites. The great achievements of Mesopotamian civilisation were pressed into the service of the Ba'athist regime.

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

Some people think it's naive to think we can make love our new bottom line. What I believe is naive is thinking human civilization as we know it will survive another two hundred years if we do not.

I love fashion, beauty, glamour. It's the mark of civilisation.

Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation.