Quotes About Civilization

No civilization has ever survived unless the elders saw it their duty to pass on gifts of Spirit to the young ones.

No civilization has ever survived unless the elders saw it their duty to pass on gifts of Spirit to the young ones. Is it that we are selfish, or is it that we ourselves have never found the gift ourselves? I suspect it is largely the latter. I don't think most people are terribly selfish. They just don't know.

We stood facing each other. White witch doctor against black witch doctor. Hero against Villain—or so I liked to think of it, at least. Who would win? Would Civilization be saved? Equally important, would I?

And if this disenchanted vision were elevated to the status of being the only legitimate vision of the nature of the cosmos upheld by an entire civilization, what an incalculable loss, an impoverishment, a tragic deformation, a grief, would ultimately be suffered by both knower and known.

Is not life exactly what it ought to be, in a certain sense? Isn't it only the naive who find all of this baffling? If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself?

the civilization which had given birth to Bigger contained no spiritual sustenance, had created no culture which could hold and claim his allegiance and faith, had sensitized him and had left him stranded

These conditions reflected the failures of modern civilization—the death of genuine spiritual values and traditions, the harsh ness of economic greed and exploitation, the avarice for glittering material goods that, in a culture of consumerism, ultimately possessed the possessor.

To ask a writer to deny the validity of his sensual perceptions is to ask him to be 'expedient' enough to commit spiritual suicide for the sake of politicians … My task is to weigh the effects of our civilization upon the personality, as it affects it here and now. If, in my weighing of those effects, I reveal rot, pus, filth, hate, fear, guilt, and degenerate forms of life, must I be consigned to hell?" Richard Wright, author Native Son

And do you know what a full-fledged war would look like, Percy? Bad? I guessed. Imagine the world in chaos. Nature at war with itself. Olympians forced to choose sides between Zeus amd Poseidon. Destruction. Carnage. Millions dead. Western civilization turned into a battleground so big it will make the Trojan War look like a water-balloon fight. Bad, I repeated.

It was if the city knew about Percy's dream of Gaea. It knew that the earth goddess intended on razing all human civilization, and this city, which had stood for thousands if years, was saying back at her: You wanna dissolve this city, Dirt Face? Give it a shot. In other words, it was the Coach Hedge of mortal cities- only taller.

The Ancient Egyptians were not fools, Carter. They built the pyramids. They created the first great nation state. Their civilization lasted thousands of years." "Yeah," I said. "And now they're gone.

It knew that the earth goddess intended on razing all human civilization, and this city, which had stood ffor thousands of years, was saying back to her: You wanna dissolve this city, Dirt Face? Give it a shot.

A legacy that powerful does not disappear. Next to the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans were babies. Our modern nations like Great Britain and America? Blinks of an eye...The very oldest root of civilization, at least of Western civilization, is Egypt. Look at the pyramid on the dollar bill. Look at the Washington Monument—the world's largest Egyptian obelisk. Egypt is still.......very much alive.

You're trying to shore up a civilization that's in its death throes," Hugh said, as casually as if he were remarking on the weather. "There's really no point.

Buying and selling, that's all people did. You could buy women, you could buy kids, you could buy anything. Western civilization had had a good run but now it had pretty much shopped itself out of existence.

We're all primitives underneath, that's why we had to invent God, to be the voice of our conscience, or we would be killing each other left, right and centre.

Civilization as well as education takes a downward spiral when it ceases to ask What is truth? and concerns itself primarily with what is measurable.

I immediately understood that all our training—the rehearsal of thoughts and actions, the merging of individual identities into a coordinated and interdependent force—was done in anticipation of this very moment, to stanch the fundamental impulse to flee from such terror. We smelled that death—perhaps the death of civilization—and we kept moving toward it, thereby becoming something more and less than human.

Extending hospitality to all, even to the most cloddish, truly is the basis of civilization. The fact that the most cloddish, having nothing better to do, always show up and spoil the party for everyone else probably spells civilization's ultimate doom.

Extending hospitality to all, even to the most cloddish, truly is the basis of civilization. The fact that the most cloddish, having nothing better to do, always show up and spoil the party for everyone else probably spells civilization's ultimate doom.

What a disgrace! They were afraid...ashamed...they chose to conceal it...they buried the roots of a Great Civilization...they lacked the courage to go further...and turned their backs on what science had to offer them...and tried to seal away forever the hole they had torn open with their own hands.

The fact is, such great affairs will always be beyond the understanding of those such as you and I, and those of us who wish to make our mark must realize that we best do so by concentrating on what is within our realm; that is to say, by devoting our attention to providing the best possible service to those great gentlemen in whose hands the destiny of civilization truly lies.

I think I saw a cabin. Whether there's anyone in it or not--" "Who cares?" Corey said. "It's civilization. Let's go." He broke into a jog, and his knee gave way. I managed to catch him before he fell. "The only place you're going is flat on your ass," Daniel said.

With faultless good manners they would lead the world to destruction.