Quotes About Civilization

I wasn't sure about that, but one never knows. Sometimes a neighborhood, like a culture or civilization, is strong enough to absorb and acculturate any number of newcomers. But I don't know if that's true around here any longer. The outward forms and appearances look the same - [...]- but the substance has been altered.

a place where the worst elements of humanity had defeated civilization.

We are not on our fours, howling in the woods, only because guilt saves us.

Technologies come and go. The world remains a world of squares and towers.

No serious writer would claim that the reign of Western civilization was unblemished. Yet there are those who would insist that there was nothing whatever good about it. This position is absurd.

Sivilisaation ydin ovat tekstit, jotka sen kouluissa opetetaan, jotka sen oppilaat oppivat ja jotka muistetaan koettelemusten aikana.

The biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity — and by the historical ignorance that feeds it.

To demonstrate that Western institutions have indeed degenerated, I am going to have to open up some long-sealed black boxes. The first is the one labelled 'democracy'. The second is labelled 'capitalism'. The third is 'the rule of law'. And the fourth is 'civil society'. Together, they are the key components of our civilization.

The life of a hunter-gatherer is indeed, as Thomas Hobbes said of the state of nature, 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.

Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson

it is not 'Eurocentrism' or (anti-)'Orientalism' to say that the rise of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ. It is a statement of the obvious.

We are, above all, British citizens of the Great British Empire. Fighting as the British are at present in a righteous cause for the good and glory of human dignity and civilisation

they are the key components of our civilization. I want to show that inside these political, economic, legal and social black boxes are highly complex sets of interlocking institutions. Like the circuit boards inside your computer or your smartphone, it is these institutions that make the gadget work. And if it stops working, it is probably because of a defect in the institutional wiring. You cannot understand what is wrong just by looking at the shiny casing. You need to look inside.

good individuals cannot exist without good education, and good education cannot exist without good laws

Let's recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower but also of chance and early upbringing, and that compassion isn't a sign of weakness but a mark of civilization.

To the Greeks [the Macedonians] were uncouth, semi-civilized barbarians. The Macedonians for their part despised the Greeks as effete, wishy-washy Greeklings. Both regarded the Thracians as scarcely capable of walking on their hind legs.

You think you're in another civilization, another time, and then you see antennas coming out of these hovels, and your mouth falls open when you see the descendants of the Incas shouting 'Columbo! Columbo!'

The challenge for America is: can we become a multicultural, multiracial democracy? It would be historic. It would be America's greatest contribution to human civilization.

My favourite museum is the British Museum.

Perhaps the greatest Maya mystery of all is the cause of the civilization's abrupt decline. The last dated stela erected at Tikal was put up in A.D. 869; the last anywhere in the Maya world, in 909.

A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation.

The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization.

I know about technology, about research, scientific applications, culture, civilization, differences between nations of the world, the nature of history.