Quotes About Civilization

This law of capitalistic society would sound absurd to savages, or even civilised colonists. It calls to mind the boundless reproduction of animals individually weak and constantly hunted down.24

In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce

The Commune, they exclaim, intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labour of the many the wealth of the few.

La cooperación en el proceso de trabajo, que es la forma imperante en los comienzos de la civilización, en los pueblos de cazadores,20 o en la agricultura de las comunidades indias se basa, de una parte, en la propiedad colectiva sobre las condiciones de producción y de otra parte en el hecho de, que el individuo no ha roto todavía el cordón umbilical que le une a la comunidad o a la tribu, de la que forma parte como la abeja de la colmena. Ambas

Die Geschichte ist die wahre Naturgeschichte des Menschen.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie . . . has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.

It was possible, she thought, that she had won the race to reach the end of civilization. There was no prize. Obviously.

By the end of the war there was nothing about men and women that surprised him. Nothing about anything really. The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.

So much for progress. How quickly civilization could dissolve into its more ugly elements.

A van drew up in the centre of St. Helen's Square and disgorged several people dressed as zombies. The zombies proceeded to chase the men who were dressed as condoms. The condom men didn't seem very surprised, as if they were expecting to be chased by zombies. ("They pay for it," Bertie said.) Was this fun? Viola despaired. It was possible, she thought, that she had won the race to reach the end of civilization. There was no prize. Obviously.

In its amplest meaning History includes every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since first he appeared on the earth.

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.

Culture means the perfect and equal development of man on all sides.

It has been said that he who was the first to abuse his fellow-man instead of knocking out his brains without a word, laid thereby the basis of civilisation.

When did one man ever civilize a people?

It is a mark of civilised man that he seeks to understand his traditions, and to criticise them, not to swallow them whole.

The attainment of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men.

Fields and trees are not willing to teach me anything; but this can be effected by men residing in the city.

For at least 2,000,000 years men have been reproducing and multiplying on a little automated spaceship called earth.

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

Is man's civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?

The true epic of our times is not "Arm's and the Man," but "Tools and the Man"--an infinitely wider kind of epic.