Quotes About Civilization

The Down Markets opened out onto it from three sides; a more decrepit collection of useless items for sale Tehol had yet to see. And the people bought in a frenzy, day after blessed day. Our civilization thrives on stupidity . And it only took a sliver of cleverness to tap that idiot vein and drink deep of the riches. Comforting, if slightly depressing. The way of most grim truths.

Our civilization thrives on stupidity. And it only took a sliver of cleverness to tap that idiot vein and drink deep of the riches. Comforting, if slightly depressing. The way of most grim truths.

Gothos walked into the heart of his city, to where the Jaghut who ruled collectively were all gathered. Among them, to be sure, there were great minds, and many who still held to the ideal of civilization. But then Gothos ascended the central speaker's dais. He began his oration, and when, at last, he was done, he was met with silence. On that day, the Jaghut civilization ended. And in the days that followed, Gothos was named the Lord of Hate.

We rejected civilization, but so too we rejected anarchy for its petty belligerence and the weakness of thought it announced. By these decisions, we made ourselves lost and bereft of purpose

You can't leave all these people behind. They're outside the endless excitement and lust, the frenzied accumulation. They're outside and can only look on with growing despair and envy. What happens when rage supplants helplessness? Increasingly, the ranks of the military were filling with the lowest classes. Training, acceptable income and a full belly provided the incentives, yet these soldiers were not enamoured of the civilization they were sworn to defend.

kind. It increases in complexity the more of us there are. Laws keep us muzzled and punishment delivers the necessary message when those

I sometimes think we only invented war when we ran out of animals to kill.

Corporate globalism is now the dominant power in your civilization," Adam said. "Once corporations won the right to be treated as if they were people, the common citizen was disenfranchised, because the law then became the official control system for corporate interests over human interests, and corporations treat citizens as units of economy, thus stripping them of their essential humanity. There's nothing more inhuman than a corporation and its interests.

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible. And if he wishes to live, he must do what he can to prevent the world he wants to live in from fading away. As long as there's war, life is a preventative measure.

He will behave now as he hopes everyone will someday behave. Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible. And if he wishes to live, he must do what he can to prevent the world he wants to live in from fading away. As long as there's war, life is a preventative measure.

The true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery

I think God's going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.

if the Net is so crucial, what happens if the Net goes down? It may have to go down a few times before we learn how to defend it properly, before we catch on that civilization depends on it for survival.

The scale of forces, this time, is planetary; the scope is centuries; the stakes are what we call civilization; and it is all taking place at the headlong speed of self-accelerating human technologies and climatic turbulence. Talk of "saving the planet" is overstated, however. Earth will be fine, no matter what; so will life. It is humans who are in trouble. But since we got ourselves into this fix, we should be able to get ourselves out of it.

But all of that civilized sophistication could collapse if carrying capacities everywhere are lowered by severe climate change. Humanity would revert to its norm of constant battles for diminishing resources. Peace lovers would be killed and eaten by war lovers.

Only two questions, however, need concern the civilized creature. Why is traditional kosher wine so second-rate (it is often boiled); and, if Muslims and Jews are the only people whose laws make them (almost) each other's ideal dinner guests, why can't they get along?

The cool contemplation of other people's suffering while one exhibits polished manners in a society that is deemed civil is only a shade less immoral than the direct infliction of suffering. Thus, civilization, as it is often practiced today, is really manufactured, inauthentic civilization.

Civilization, as it is often practiced today, is really manufactured, inauthentic civilization

May the Old Ones forgive me, but as the leagues rolled past our carriage windows, the pleasure of the hunt came over me too and I reverted to a forgotten farmer wildness. Eventually, I no longer had to force myself to kill. And yet, at the time, I could not find the will to be ashamed of it, which means I must accept that this cruel greed is a part of me, thankfully hidden in the regulated, civilised world of Sacramante, but always present in the deepest corners of my souls.

In 1945, the United States inherited the earth.... at the end of World War II, what was left of Western civilization passed into the American account. The war had also prompted the country to invent a miraculous economic machine that seemed to grant as many wishes as were asked of it.

Being open to change, asking questions, being rebellious, being creative—that is how a civilization grows and becomes like a huge banyan tree—giving shelter and shade to many people of many regions, languages, religions and gender.

blind obedience is never good for a civilization because when people stop thinking, it kills progress.

I hate nature. I really do. Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff.

'Buncha Losers' comedy is one of those homegrown American art forms, up there with infomercials and Elvis-shaped soap carvings. No other civilization could have invented it. The French took a stab with Sartre's 'No Exit,' but then they had to ruin it with a lesson at the end.