Quotes About Civilization

Toynbee's idea that civilizations die not by murder but by suicide.

Yet the special thing about literature, the major art form of a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes, is not hard to define.

But it remains the case that, on the level of consumption, the preeminence of the twentieth century was indisputable: nothing, in any other civilization, in any other epoch, could compare itself to the mobile perfection of a contemporary shopping center functioning at full tilt. I had thus consumed, with joy, shoes most notably; then, gradually, I had grown weary, and I had understood that my life, without this daily input of basic, renewable pleasures, was going to stop being simple.

The French Revolution, the republic, the motherland Ã¢â'¬Â¦ yes, all that paved the way for something, something that lasted a little more than a century. The Christian Middle Ages lasted a millennium and more.

The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.

La civilización ha desnaturalizado así al animal que somos para transformarnos en observadores del mundo al precio de una deplorable incapacidad para olerlo y degustarlo. Así es como nos apartamos cada vez más de lo real para contentarnos con gozar de las imágenes que lo representan.

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

You know, I always think about going back to college. Just to catch up on all those books that supposedly shape our lives but nobody ever reads." "Yeah? Like what?" . . . "Well, there's the Bible. You ever read it?" "Parts," said Lewis. "Well, this whole wrecked civilization is based on a book most people have only read parts of.

Being cast out of society early on made you see civilization for the farce it was, a theater of cruelty you were free to drop out of. Instead of playing along you became a fuckup. It was a political statement and a survival skill.

As Heinz Pagels has said, The challenge to our civilization which has come from our knowledge of the cosmic energies that fuels the stars, the movement of light and electrons through matter, the intricate molecular order which is the biological basis of life, must be met by the creation of a moral and political order which will accommodate these forces or we shall be destroyed. It will try our deepest resources of reason and compassion.

El hombre es un fin, no un medio. La civilización toda se endereza al hombre, a cada hombre, a cada yo. ¿O qué es ese ídolo, llámese Humanidad o como se llamare, a que se han de sacrificar todos y cada uno de los hombres? Porque

es que a falta de animales domésticos en que descargar el peso de la animalidad de la vida habría el hombre llegado a su humanidad?

Yes, yes, I see it all! — an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist — for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?

civilization is built on the repression of individual desires

As Freud and many others before and after him have noted, civilization is built on the repression of individual desires.

la civilización se construye sobre la represión de los deseos individuales.

Work as we know it now is a very recent historical development. It didn't exist before the great agricultural revolutions that made intensive farming possible about twelve thousand years ago.

The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.

Life is much richer and more complex than even the most perfect plans to make it better. It ultimately takes vengeance for attempts to impose abstract schemes, even with the best of intentions. Perestroika has made us understand this about our past, and the actual experience of recent years has taught us to reckon with the most general laws of civilization.

The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. ... If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.

ratovi su kao požari koje još nitko nije pogasio, a mogla bi ih pogasiti isklju?ivo sama ljudska pamet na temelju spoznaje da je rat diluvijalno divljaštvo, a da je današnji ?ovjek, ukoliko je to, naime ?ovjek, davno ve? prestao da bude kanibal.

?ovjek, taj isti trijumfator nad životinjama, i sam je još uvijek životinja.