Quotes About Civilization

To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.

What better way to destroy a civilization, society or a race than to set people into the wild oscillations which follow their turning over their judgment and decision-making faculties to a superhero?

A Wall Street man is greedy, too. No harm in that. Without greed, I always say, there'd be no civilization. But the Wall Street man doesn't have the patience to till the soil or manufacture things. He's clever, but he's not deep. He invests in companies, but he doesn't much care what they are, or what they do. What he wants is to bet on them. Wall Street will always be full of young men, betting.

Bridget carried cups of tea over to the two men, and as she turned to fetch her own cup, David held the burning tip of his cigar close to the ants and ran it along in both directions as far as he could conveniently reach. The ants twisted, excruciated by the heat, and dropped down onto the terrace. Some, before they fell, reared up, their stitching legs trying helplessly to repair their ruined bodies. 'What a civilized life you have here,' Bridget sang out as

Taxation is the price which civilized communities pay for the opportunity of remaining civilized.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: He fornicated and read the papers.

I don't know the weapons that will be used in the Third World War, but in the Forth men will use wood and stones

All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

More and more I come to value charity and love of one's fellow being above everything else... All our lauded technological progress--our very civilization--is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

American society is the only one which has passed directly from barbarism into decadence without once knowing civilisation.

The colonialst as the custodian of the values of civilization and history, he accomplishes a mission; he has the immense merit of bringing light to the colonized's ignominious darkness.

By itself the affirmation of life can only produce a partial and imperfect civilization. Only if it turns inward and becomes ethical can the will to progress attain the ability to distinguish the valuable from the worthless. We must therefore strive for a civilization that is not based on the accretion of science and power alone, but which cares most of all for the spiritual and ethical development of the individual and of humankind. How

There is value in any experience that reminds us of our dependency on the soil-plant-animal-man food chain [...] Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relation with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry. Time was when education moved toward soil, not away from it.

A man may not care for golf and still be human, but the man who does not like to see, hunt, photograph, or otherwise outwit birds or animals is hardly normal. He is supercivilized, and I for one do not know how to deal with him.

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization

Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface.

The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.