Quotes About Civilization

It is a very great mistake, and a very common one, even for well-read persons, to adopt the idea that the progress of the human race in the science of government, in the arts of civilization and refinement, and in the establishment of morality and religion, has been constantly and steadily towards improvement and perfection.

We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and irrational.

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.

Poland is not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.

Thus lynch law held sway in the far West until civilization spread into the Territories and the orderly processes of law took its place. The emergency no longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.

As a cultural product of both 'East' and 'West', I do not believe there is a fundamental basis for a clash of civilisations, or that the West is the cause of all problems.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

The West hasn't reached its universal state as yet, although its close to it, but it certainly has evolved out of its warring state phase, which it was in for a couple of centuries.

We in the West should stand by our core principles.

Borne out of this, starting around the 17th Century was the Baroque era. It is my view that it is one of the architectural peak periods in western civilisation.

I should like to say that I am as proud of my Chinese heritage and background as I am devoted to modern science, a part of human civilization of Western origin, to which I have dedicated and I shall continue to dedicate my work.

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended.

The only reality is our society, and I mean this seriously, Western Society is a very sick society.

The cult of the individual is killing us. I think Twitter signals the death of western civilisation, but people have been saying that since Demosthenes.

I do not believe that the values which the Western democracies consider essential to civilization can survive in a world rent by the international anarchy of nationalism and the economic anarchy of competitive enterprise.

We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his story?

China has existed within very roughly its present borders for over two millennia and for virtually the whole of that period saw itself as a 'civilisation state.' It was only when it was too weak to resist the western powers in the early 20th century that it finally acquiesced in an arrangement that was alien to it.

Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization.

Western civilization is, no doubt, predominantly on the side of secular relativism. That is not true in the Islamic world, where faith dominates.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

Christianity is the very root and foundation of Western civilization.

As the publisher of the 'Tory,' I strive to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.