Quotes About Civilization

America has learned what our repressive and terrorist adversaries do not understand: that liberty without law is anarchy, liberty to defy law is rebellion, but liberty limited by law is the cornerstone of civilization.

Liberty limited by law is the cornerstone of civilization.

As civilization speeds toward its final destiny, the appearance of a powerful world ruler is inevitable.

serious case of this syndrome, sympathizing and identifying with subversive characters while being mysteriously repelled by genuine virtue. Seen at public events with leftists radicals, LGBT groups, or proabortion outfits like Planned Parenthood, Obama's smile is broad and animated; he obviously feels comfortable and at home there. Yet he displays a palpable aversion to all that is emblematic of the success of Western Judeo-Christian civilization.

Violence has followed our species every step of the way in its long journey through time.

Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Si estudias a fondo la civilización, comienzas a deconstruirla, me explicó. Si le quitas las pátinas falsas, descubres el óxido. Si conoces al ser humano, dejas de amar al ser humano de manera ciega y complaciente.

this terrible baptism of blood and fire through which our nation is passing . . . not as has been most cruelly affirmed, because of the presence of men of color in the land, but by malignant . . . vices, nursed into power . . . at the poisoned breast of slavery, it will come at last . . . purified in its spirit freed from slavery, vastly greater . . . than it ever was before in all the elements of advancing civilization.

Atlantis was one name for an ancient civilization that went through a terrible catastrophe and that we now have the opportunity to not repeat the same mistakes. We have the opportunity to use our technology responsibly and to steward the earth rather than steer it into its own destruction.

Fire, ice, asteroids and pole shifts are bogeymen with which we distract ourselves from the real threat of our time. In an age when everyone invents his own truth, there is no community, only factions. Without community, there can be no consensus to resist the greedy, the envious, the power-mad narcissists who seize control and turn the institutions of civilization into a series of doom machines.

After once having made the mistake of watching television news, I had worried for a while about an asteroid hitting the earth and wiping out human civilization. The anchorwoman had said it was not merely possible but probable. At the end of the report, she smiled.

Riots come and go, wars come and go, but under the tumult, day after day, century after century, millions of people are doing nice things for one another, making sacrifices, mostly small things, but it's all those little kindnesses that hold civilization together, all those people who live quiet lives and never make the news.

The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart.

The mommy-porn genre currently sweeping the book industry and the Babylonian excess of most television shows probably fall within the historical norm in our culture's sleaze index and are not omens of the imminent collapse of civilization, though if I were not so busy, I might start building an ark.

A city is half beast and half machine, with arteries of fresh water and veins of foul, nerves of telephone and electrical cables, sewer lines for bowels, pipes full of pressurized steam and others carrying gas, valves and fans and filters and meters and motors and transformers and tens of thousands of interlinked computers, and though its people sleep, the city never does.

Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization.

Dignity is not located in seeking equality with the white man and his civilization: it is not about assuming the attitudes of the master who has allowed his slaves to eat at his table. It is about being oneself with all the multiplicities, systems and contradictions of one's way of being, doing and knowing. It is about being true to one's Self.

No one has understood this opium of poverty. The lottery, all-powerful fairy of the poor, bestowed the gift of magic hopes. The turn of the wheel which opens to the gambler a vista of gold and happiness, lasts no longer than a flash of lightning, but the lottery gave five days' existence to that magnificent flash. What social power can to-day, for the sum of five sous, give us five days' happiness and launch us ideally into all the joys of civilization?

The police!" he cried; "one may say of it, as Basile said of calumny to Batholo, 'The police, monsieur! you don't know what you despise!' And, after all," he continued, after a pause, "who are they who despise it? Imbeciles, who don't know any better than to insult their protectors. Suppress the police, and you destroy civilization. Do the police ask for the respect of such people?

Tears came into Eugene's eyes. He was still under the spell of youthful beliefs, he had just left home, pure and sacred feelings had been stirred within him, and this was his first day on the battlefield of civilization in Paris. Genuine feeling is so infectious that for a moment the three looked at each other in silence.

Customs are reflection of the people and the law is reflection of country's reason.

Obey society?" cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. "Eh! monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have perverted God's work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings which you cheat continually.

Lucien vit le Palais dans toute sa beauté primitive. La colonnade fut svelte, jeune, fraîche. La demeure de saint Louis reparut telle qu'elle fut, il en admirait les proportions babyloniennes et les fantaisies orientales. Il accepta cette vue sublime comme un poétique adieu de la création civilisée.