Quotes About Civilization

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

The original home of the Aryan race appears to have been somewhere among the mountains and lofty table-lands of Central Asia. The word 'Arya,' meaning the high or the excellent, indicates their superiority over the neighboring races long before the beginning of history.

Many people say I believe aliens built the pyramids. I don't. In fact I'm not a supporter of the 'ancient alien' hypothesis at all. I think a lost human civilization is a much better explanation of the mysteries and paradoxes of ancient cultures.

To live like we are supposed to, we need to listen to our blood, so to speak. Our paganism is in our blood, and to be able to create a positive and meaningful civilization in the future, on the ruins of the 'Sodom and Gomorrah' we live in today, we need to live in accordance with our blood.

We're supposed to be becoming more evolved as a society, and we're actually becoming less evolved.

To realize life in the abstract as noble or beautiful or humane, to set it forth so with radiance upon it, that is civilization in the arts. Shakespeare is the chief modern example of this supreme faculty of mankind.

We are not in the regime of Aurangzeb. We are in the regime of rule of law. When rule of law is concerned, it applies to government, it applies to Supreme Court, it applies to everybody.

Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.

Even in a healthy society, violence, lawlessness, and predation lie just below the surface.

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.

He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He's going to let it go on a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he's apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.

He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He's going to let it go on for a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he's apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.

My friend speaks of the tyranny of the quantifiable, of the way what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot: private profit over public good; speed and efficiency over enjoyment and quality; the utilitarian over the mysteries and meanings that are of greater use to our survival and to more than our survival, to lives that have some purpose and value that survive beyond us to make a civilization worth having.

as a shout-out to one of the more unpleasant men who have explained things to me: Dude, if you're reading this, you're a carbuncle on the face of humanity and an obstacle to civilization. Feel the shame.

It struck her that the difference between men and women is the rock on which civilization will split before it can reach any goal that could justify its expenditure of effort.

Tu as rdv la viande, la salade, les fruits. Tu m'as dit : - Vous mangez de la bête! ... Vous mangez de l'herbe! ... Vous mangez de l'arbre! ... J'ai essayé de sourire. J'ai répondu : - Nous sommes des barbares... J'ai fait venir des roses. Tu as cru que cela aussi nous le mangions...

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

They're animals, all right. But why are you so sure that makes us human beings?

I had the thought that this is what true civilization really is; not the cities or the monuments or the statecraft or even the politics: but this. This slip of a lady, with barely the physical power to get around on her own unaided, holding a thousand others in thrall, threaded together on the silence by the force and power of her art, her being, her imagining.

what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.

If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?

Science-fiction authors, such as Daniel F. Galouye in Counterfeit World, have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization.

Earlier than about 10,000 years ago, all human populations were hunter gatherers. Soon, probably none will be. Those not extinct will be 'civilised' — or corrupted, depending on your point of view.

Mississippi is the center of the universe," he said. "The two biggest issues in western Christian civilization are the white-black race issue and the rich-and-poor issue. Mississippi is at the apex of both. And if anybody in the world can solve the problem, it's Mississippi.