Quotes About Civilization

For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.

Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.

Ancient Rome was a violent place.

Pre-state societies were far more violent than our own.

Violent drama has been a hallmark of every great civilization. It is not the cause of the disease - it is an immunizing factor. People go to the theater to experience emotions like fear and loathing. Violent drama shows us where we come from. It makes us face our hypocrisy.

Your chances of dying a violent death are 1/500th of what they used to be during medieval times.

It is possible to take the story of Noah figuratively, although virtually every Near East ancient civilization has its own version of the flood story (including the amoral epic of Gilgamesh).

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

The more we become civilized, the more we simultaneously understand our need to be virtuous and our need to understand our experiences on a subconscious level.

The true face of religion belongs to the re-enchantment of our injured civilization; faith is a way of filling all the spiritual spaces in our damaged world with the vision of a loving God, the God described in the Qur'an as al-Rahman al-Rahim.

Civilization without regeneration, without a supernatural change of the heart, will never bring in a millennium, an effective and glorious rule of Jesus Christ.

The makers of our constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness... They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of the rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

I know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish...well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point.

No people ever did or ever can attain a worthy civilization by the satisfaction merely of material needs . . .

All that I would like to be is human, having a share in a civilized, articulate and well-adjusted community where the mind is given its due but the body is not distrusted

Of course civilizations are aggressive, Holmes says, but when they take up arms in order to impose their conception of civility on others, they sacrifice their moral advantage. Organized violence, at bottom, is just another form of oppression.

El verdadero fin de las operaciones de la alquimia, que acaso son residuos de una ciencia muy antigua perteneciente a una civilización desaparecida, es la transformación del propio alquimista, su ascenso a un estado de conciencia superior.

I don't know, Armand. It made me sick. And sad. And glad I live far—" "From the madding crowd?" Vincent Gilbert smiled and nodded. "Yes. I peek out every now and then, then scuttle back to my little cabin, where I hope so-called civilization won't find me.

Are we really growing more civilised? More tolerant? Less violent? If things had changed, you wouldn't be here.

I am distinctly opposed to visibly arrogant and arbitrary extremes of government--but this is simply because I wish the safety of an artistic and intellectual civilisation to be secure, not because I have any sympathy with the coarse-grained herd who would menace the civilisation if not placated by sops.

We must recognise the essential underlaying savagery in the animal called man, and return to older and sounder principles of national life and defense. We must realise that man's nature will remain the same so long as he remains man; that civilisation is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake.

They should pick a dry year to fight the war. Better yet, civilize the moronic races and have no wars at all.

The next step was the use of huts and skins and fire, And women became the property of one man. So the chaste pleasures of a private Venus Were first invented and couples had their own children. It was then that the human race began to soften.

it is labor, and labor only, which makes civilization possible. 'Tis labor that toils, and spins, and weaves, and builds, that another, not it, may enjoy. 'Tis the laborers who dive into the unknown caverns of the sea and compel her to yield up her hidden treasures, which they know not even the value thereof.