Quotes About Civilization

Pessimism is a product of our civilization. It is not natural to the savage; he feels pain, or discomfort, and suffers from these palpable conditions, but when he recovers from wounds he forgets the torments, and when he is well fed he is joyous in the light of day.

There will be a layer in the fossil record where you'll know people were here because of the squashed remains of automobiles. It will be a very thin layer.

Human activity and hence history may be conveniently subdivided under five captions: political, economic, social, religious, and cultural.

[T]he historian lays humanity on the couch.

In Europe, Murrow observed to his wife, people were dying and "a thousand years of civilization [were] being smashed" while America remained on the sidelines. How could one possibly be objective or neutral about that?

only those who have the will and the power to shoot down their fellow men, are the real rulers in this, as in all other (so-called) civilized countries; for by no others will civilized men be robbed, or enslaved.

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.

It is a land of Wonders! It is a land of Mystery. It is a land that Time Forgot (or chose specifically not to remember). Cut off from the civilized world for untold years, this land is called: Delaware.

It's the end. It's the end of the civilization. We're going down. No, it's sure not too attractive. Lenticels. I just hope my kids don't live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars. Violet. The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.

The Nuremberg trials established the principle that neither "obeying the law" nor "following orders" is a sufficient legal defense for those accused of violating basic standards of civilization.

How do you bear it?" he said. My eyes gave off a faint light, and by it I could see his face, It was a surprise to realise that he was waiting for an answer. I believed I had one. I thought of another dim room, with another prisoner. He had been a craftsman also. On the foundation of his knowledge, civilisation had been built. Prometheus' words deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. "We bear it as best we can," I said.

There was violence in that room, with so many princes and heroes and kings competing for a single prize, but we knew how to ape civilization.

despite the Turks' friendliness, most of the exiles soon left Istanbul. No opportunities existed there for them, and Turkey seemed an alien land. Private individuals proceeded to western Europe, French visas being most sought after. Russians still regarded Paris as the center of civilization, especially in contrast to the ferocious Stone Age into which Russia had fallen, or to the sleepy lands of the former Ottoman Empire.

The twentieth century will be American. American thought will dominate it. American progress will give it color and direction. American deeds will make it illustrious. Civilization will never lose its hold on Shanghai. Civilization will never depart from Hongkong. The gates of Peking will never again be closed to the methods of modern man. The regeneration of the world, physical as well as moral, has begun, and revolutions never move backwards.

The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of the nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose - and is a test to the quality of a nation's civilization.

S?radan insan uygarl???n lanetidir.

He makes me change, he makes me want to dance round him, bewilder him, dazzle him, dumbfound him. He' so slow, so unimaginative, so lifeless. Like zinc white. I see it's a sort of tyranny he has over me. He forces me to be changeable, to act. To show off. The hateful tyranny of weak people. G.P. said it once. The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.

Tavainimene on tsivilisatsiooni nuhtlus. Aga tema on juba ebatavaliselt tavaline.

The ancient Greeks could laugh at themselves. The Romans could not. That is why France is a civilized society and Spain is not.

I saw that this cataclysm must be an expiation for some barbarous crime of civilization, some terrible human lie. What the lie was, I had too little knowledge of history or science to know then. I know now it was our believing that we were fulfilling some end, serving some plan—that all would come out well in the end, because there was some great plan over all. Instead of the reality. There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves.

The ordinary man is the curse of civilization

Mediocritatea este plaga civilizatiei. Dar mediocritatea il face atat de comun, incat devine iesit din comun.

There was no art in cultures as ancient as the Egyptian and the Minoan. Conscious art did not exist for them. They wanted only to control. That is how they would want us to judge them - by how well they controlled

There are people in my life who sometimes worry about me when I go off into the fields and streams, not realizing that the country is a calm, gracious, forgiving place and that the real dangers are found in the civilization you have to pass through to get there. When