Quotes About Civilization

Civilization, her mother had told her since she was small, was a series of agreements about what was good for everyone, enforced by law. And civilization was only a thin veneer over the savagery and greed that were the human default.

Me di cuenta de que sin palabras los humanos nos convertimos en bestias y perdemos la cordura

Islam has existed for 1,400 years, includes one-fifth of the world's population, and has ruled geographical areas that are more extensive than any other world empire.

Can't you see there's a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.

Civilization -- a heap of rubble scavenged by scrawny English Lit. vultures.

We humans are a frightening animal. Throughout our species existence, we have used each new technology we have developed to boost the destructive power of our ancient predisposition for killing members of our own species.

Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.

a western half comprising Italy, Spain, Gaul and Britain,

and an eastern half that included the Balkans, Greece, Palestine and Egypt.

The Emergence of Kings and Kingdoms

life in Britain before the arrival of the Romans was not necessarily any nicer,

A visitor in the seventh century could still see triumphal arches, baths, palaces, theatres, bridges, aqueducts and fountains,

whatever their ancestry – assumed all this would last forever, for the empire was eternal.

north of the River Rhine and the River Danube, and west of the River Vistula.

their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.

As we sat by the camp-fire the brightness of the sky brought on a long talk with the Indians about the stars; and their eager childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.

Read Civilization on Trial and The World and the West.

A civilization unable to differentiate between illusion and reality is usually believed to be at the tail end of its existence.

Once established for a few generations, civilization might seem durable enough to last forever. But the skin of enlightened self-interest is very delicate, easily eroded, and the human capacity for unspeakable barbarity lies just beneath its surface.

She thought it was pretty much the only way to be in a universe that didn't care about anyone's life one way or another, and in a civilization that was designed to keep the rich as rich as possible and the poor from actively starving so they wouldn't think to rise up and behead the rich.

at the moment, the number of fundamentally selfish and self-interested people that human civilization could tolerate, particularly in the social tranche that could actually have an impact on the fate of humanity, had shrunk considerably

Pela grossura da camada de pó que cobre a lombada dos livros de uma biblioteca pública pode medir-se a cultura de um povo.

Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929