Quotes About Civilization

Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals; but, however unwilling the partisans of the Christian system may be to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true that the age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed. -Agrarian Justice

Despotic government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing do with laws but to obey them, and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation. -Agrarian Justice

Charged with the mission of operating beyond the boundaries of civilization with minimal support and no communication from higher authority, they lived and often died by the motto, 'Order first, then law will follow.

Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication - particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials.

A Greek invention, democracy is highly overrated. For starters, it never worked in Greece. The first philosophers were fascists and, even today, 2,500 years later, the 'cradle of Western civilization' remains an incompetent state. Roman emperors and a vengeful, authoritarian God are the true European success stories.

In a word I claim that our city as a whole is an education to Greece.

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

My work is based upon contemporary Greek poetry - poetry which is concerned with the problems of today's civilization and, of course, with simple personal feelings of love, nostalgia, etc.

When we say Tamil, we are not talking of a language but an entire civilisation.

Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can.

If we want a great future in this world, we have to take God at his word, and God makes it really clear that society and civilization is held together by the glue of families... This is where the next generation of human beings are incubated and nurtured and matured - in homes. In families.

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.

Man is capable of every great heroism; it was man who found a means of conquering the formidable obstacles of his environment, establishing himself lord of the earth, and laying the foundations of civilization.

The contents of the massive banks behind these successive revetments makes it quite clear that the material was derived from the incorporation of earlier occupation levels.

When America began, it was the first time in the history of civilization that a nation dared to make an enormous bet founded on this daring notion—that there is more good than bad in people.

Homo sapiens is a spider trying to crawl out of a basin. The higher he crawls, the steeper the hill. Sooner or later, down he goes. So long as he's on the bottom, he can get along quite nicely, but as soon as he starts climbing, he begins to slip. And the higher he climbs the farther he falls. It doesn't matter which direction he tries. He can make civilization after civilization, but every time, long before he begins to be really civilized, skid!

In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.

Conrad,Nabokov, Naipaul - these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination however, requires that I stay in the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.

The difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner—the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques—inflict heartache on all who live among them. These

La sabiduría de una ciudad no hay que medirla por los sabios que acoge, ni por sus bibliotecas, ni por sus ilustradores, calígrafos y medersas, sino por el número de crímenes tortuosos cometidos en sus calles oscuras a lo largo de miles de años.

The time will come when human drones will be ostracized from society as nobodies, as thieves of honest men's efforts, thieves of the results of honest men's labor. The coming civilization will not tolerate these thieves of society, these lazy vagabonds who do nothing but steal the products of their labor and demoralize society by their vicious example.

poverty is the open-mouthed hell which yawns beneath civilization, we

The currents of modern civilization had somehow passed it by, and as he returned to it now, fresh from the sides of England and France, Sergei Semenov saw only familiar signs of backwardness and decay.