Quotes About Civilization

Language is the gateway to the human world. (...) Language is far older than civilization. (...) The fact that it is possible to teach apes to ride bicycles, but impossible to teach them to talk, suggests that it is the use of language rather than the use of tools which is the essential characteristic of humanity. The word, not the sword or the spade, is the power that has created human culture.

the establishment of a universal system of public education inevitably changed the relations of education to the state. It is this above all else which has caused the mind of our society to lose its independence, so that there is no power left outside politics to guide modern civilization, when the politicians go astray. For in proportion as education becomes controlled by the state, it becomes nationalized, and in extreme cases the servant of a political party.

The events of the last forty years have inflicted such a blow to the self confidence of Western civilization and to the belief in progress which was so strong during the nineteenth century, that men tend to go too far in the opposite direction: in fact the modern world is experiencing the same kind of danger which was so fatal to the ancient world--the crisis of which Gilbert Murray writes in his Four Stages of Greek Religion as "The Loss of Nerve.

hemos cogido nuestros cuerpos vigorosos y resistentes de cazadores-recolectores y los hemos dejado caer en un mundo artificial de ocio.

Quando si strappano tutte le fibre della civiltà è un lavoro lento quello di ricucirle insieme. Vede quei bambini per la strada che vanno a scuola? La pace è nelle loro mani. Se a scuola viene loro insegnato che la guerra è il più odioso flagello cui possa anda soggetta l'umanità, che imbratta e deforma ogni amabile occupazione dello spirito mortale, allora si potrà avere qualche speranza per il futuro.

Civilization on Earth planet was equated with selfishness and greed; those people who lived in a civilized state exploited those who did not. There were shortages of vital commodities on Earth planet, and the people in the civilized nations were able to monopolize those commodities by reason of their greater economic strength. This imbalance appeared to be at the root of the disputes.

This is not intended as a record or a chronicle, but the poetry of fossils, a reminiscence of the end of civilization. The dinosaurs left behind almost no trace of themselves. A few bones preserved in the amber, the contents of their stomachs, their waste. I only hope that we may leave behind something more than they did.

What a time! What a civilization!

Politics is not about justice. It's about the settling of personal vendettas, under a thin veneer of civilization. All politics is personal.

Women know what men have long forgotten. The ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family.

Cea mai primitiv? cultur? este întotdeauna o cultur? adult? ÅŸi, prin însuÅŸi acest lucru, incompatibil? cu manifest?rile infantile care pot fi observate în cea mai înalt? civilizaÅ£ie.

Journeys, those magic caskets full of dreamlike promises, will never again yield up their treasures untarnished. A proliferating and overexcited civilization has broken the silence of the seas once and for all. The perfumes of the tropics and the pristine freshness of human beings have been corrupted by a busyness with dubious implications, which mortifies our desires and dooms us to acquire only contaminated memories.

The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely do we identify ourselves with those we would condemn. By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most "savage" or "barbarous" of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes. The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism.

Being human signifies, for each one of us, belonging to a class, a society, a country, a continent and a civilization; and for us European earth-dwellers, the adventure played out in the heart of the New World signifies in the first place that it was not our world and that we bear responsibility for the crime of its destruction.

The Europeans fight to exterminate us and call it civilizing us.

Ricordando la disfatta bulgara, evento decisivo per l'esito della 1° guerra mondiale e dunque per la fine di una civiltà, il conte Károlyi scrive che, mentre lo aveva vissuto, non aveva percepito la sua importanza, perché "in quel momento, non era ancora diventato ." P.42

The quipu is significant because it dispels the notion that mathematics flourishes only after a civilization has developed writing; however, societies can reach advanced states without ever having developed written records.

If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology.

A good read is one of the amazing pleasures offered to us by civilization.

The answer to the nagging conundrum of how a civilized country like Germany could produce the Holocaust is that Germany ceased to be civilized from the moment Hitler came to power.

It might be said that the United States is the first known case of a civilization developing through disintegration.

In the course of the last forty years, the only part of the world that has enjoyed peace is the continent divided between two zones of political civilization both of them armed with atomic bombs. —RAYMOND ARON, LES DERNIÈRES ANNÉES DU SIÈCLE (THE LAST YEARS OF THE CENTURY), P. 68

But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness -- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked -- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.

The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization.