Quotes About Civilization

What I am saying,' [Hiram Bell] said, 'is that we once had much, and we made what we could of it, but now it is passed. Do you mourn the passing of civilization? I do not. We do not live for civilization. We live to build our souls up to be good enough for God. More beer?

the repression of primitive, violent impulses in favor of civilized behavior was a control mechanism for the more shrewdly aggressive dominators who successfully channeled *their* primitive, violent impulses into a socially acceptable form known as 'ruthlessness,' while monopolizing the right to use outright violence as a last resort for maintaining an otherwise indefensible accumulation of power and wealth.

Conséquence : il y avait, en 1919, une civilisation européenne, avec pour variante une culture américaine. Il y a, en 2017, une civilisation américaine, dont les cultures européennes semblent, avec toute leur diversité, au mieux, des variables d'ajustement, au pire, des réserves indigènes.

Nudity is an art. Besides, art is only nudity... There's no more art, only too much civilization. Art is barbarious... Art is loneliness... Nothingness is perfect nudity.

Almost everything that men have said best has been said in Greek.

The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the steam-power. It represents the active aspect of inertia which has the appearance of freedom, but not its truth, and therefore gives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside.

No civilized society can thrive upon victims whose humanity has been permanently mutilated

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

In marriage you go away from other people, but at the end of marriage they come out to welcome you back. This is civilisation, she says. The worst thing that happened to you has brought out the best in them.

Cruelty is an aspect of civilisation, I say. Cruelty is part of power; it's like the army; you bring it out when you need to. … What he calls cruelty I call the discipline of self-criticism. A woman who loves herself is unprotected. She will be invaded, put in chains, left there in the primordial swamp to love her heart out.

The sign of a civilised society is how we treat the most vulnerable and our social care system is not up to scratch.

Our own civilization has lost its way, and this makes us even more vulnerable to Islamist nihilism.

We should be concerned about the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations, without question. There is nothing automatic about adaptation. But it's clear that there is simply no science that supports claims that rising sea levels threaten civilization much less the apocalypse.

It is probable that for a long time to come the mass of mankind in civilized countries will find it both necessary and advantageous to labor for wages, and to accept the condition of hired laborers.

I've been waiting over 40 years to come to Cyprus, and it has not disappointed - the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Crossroads of Civilization, and, I might add, a genuine strategic partner to the United States of America.

United States and our allied partners need to wake up. ISIS is at war with us and civilization.

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.

The savages don't have atom bombs.

Consider the bloody history of Europe: there was a great aspiration for high culture, yet this very same culture was shaped by brutality and barbarism.

If we are to successfully build a socialist civilized country, which our people are desirous of, and ultimately solve the rural question, we should step up the cultural revolution in the countryside.

When urbanity decays, civilization suffers and decays with it.

It's particularly incumbent in the Middle East on Sunni Arab nations to fight for values, to fight for the protection of innocent life, to fight for the principles of civilization and stability and order itself.

To deal with the true causes of war one must begin by recognizing as of prime relevancy to the solution of the problem the familiar fact that civilization is a partial, incomplete, and, to a great extent, superficial modification of barbarism.

My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer's dream night. But that is taking advantage of you. Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization...which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.