Quotes About Civilization

Anthropology is the only discipline that can access evidence about the entire human experience on this planet.

Abstract academic discussions have a way of leaving their mark on entire civilizations, as the events of this century have proved all too well.

La nación más culta y religiosa de Europa permitió que lo impensable creciera en su seno.

In those days the world had its evil masters, Nero, Tiberius, and Domitian. But even amidst the collapse of civilization, the world was crawling out of darkness. We are sliding back into it, and that is the difference. Our autocrats are not vicious tyrants. They are the architects of worldpower; and they manipulate all the resources of modern psychology to control the soul of man and make him an instrument of their purpose.

I don't mean to be critical, but you have been away from civilization for quite a long time. One's perspectives can narrow.

To adapt successfully, you need to understand what the culture is overall and how it's manifested in the organization or unit you're joining (because different units may have different subcultures). In doing this, it helps to think of yourself as an anthropologist sent to study a newly discovered civilization.

In pained tones, Ottavio outlined his opinion that people were not eating enough these days. All they ever thought about was their figures, a selfish, shortsighted view contributing directly to the impoverishment of restaurateurs and the downfall of civilization as we know it. What the Goths, the Huns, and the Turks had failed to do was now being achieved by a conspiracy of dietitians who were bringing the country to its knees with all this talk of cholesterols, calories, and the evils of salt.

The Classical civilisation, which Greece originated, is the only civilisation which is spread out before us, from beginning to end.

Cairo is one of the greatest storehouses of human achievement on earth, ranging from the pharaonic through the Christian and Islamic periods to the Belle Epoque.

The rare example of thoughtful, studied deliberation occurred in 1787 with the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Now, events call for the same studiousness, deliberation, and debate on governance at a global scale. If that debate does not occur, events themselves, through those "factions" or what are today known as "special interests," will determine the fundamental goals and principles under which future civilization will be governed.

We are so accustomed to thinking of European civilization as the vanguard of the world that we forget that for much of human history, the European peninsula was at the receiving end of the miracles of the East. Over the millennia, innovations such as Mesopotamian agriculture, the Phoenician alphabet, Greek philosophy, and Arab bookkeeping all flowed from east to west. Both Christianity and Islam followed the same route. So did wheat, olives, sugar, and spices.

What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!

Fleetingly, unnervingly, I understand what he's saying but cannot accept a world that is so brutally black and white. Murder, rape and torture are the apparatus of terrorists, not of civilized societies. If we become like them, what hope do we have?

I learned that it ruled by creating classes and dividing people, by making some better than others." "Hasn't it always been that way?" Josh asked. "Every civilization is divided…." "Not every civilization," Virginia snapped. "Only the so-called advanced ones.

Just as the far higher power densities of coal made the industrial revolution possible, the far lower power densities of solar and wind would make today's high-energy, urbanized, and industrial civilization impossible. And, as we have seen, for some advocates of renewables, that has always been the goal.

Human civilization would have to occupy one hundred to one thousand times more space if it were to rely solely on renewables

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. —Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 18711

We're still in the Dark Ages. The scared and the superstitious savage still lurks behind the mask of civilization and he will remain there for untold generations to come.

century law code; the predecessor of Southampton was Hamwih;

In the third millennium BCE, modern archaeology has shown that there were indeed thousands of villages and dozens of small 'states' dotted across the river valleys of central China, rectangular walled towns of rammed earth, each with its own ruler. And in that period our narrative begins.

I have some bad news for you, Kendra," Wuu said. Kendra looked up to meet her eyes. "You're civilized." The

As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

Yksikään sivilisaatio tai aikakausi ei ole pystynyt kehittämään yksilöissään yhtä paljon katkeruutta. Siitä näkökulmasta katsottuna me elämme ennenkokematonta aikaa. Jos nykyajan henkinen tila on esitettävä yhdellä sanalla, se on epäilemättä katkeruus.

No doubt the Romans had felt that theirs was an eternal civilization, right up to the moment their empire fell apart. Were they suicides, too?