Quotes About Civilization

I go forward slowly, dead, and my vision is no longer mine, it's nothing: it's only the vision of the human animal who, without wanting, inherited Greek culture, Roman order, Christian morality, and all the other illusions that constitute the civilization in which I feel. Where can the living be?

Civilisation consists in giving something a name that doesn't belong to it and then dreaming over the result. And the false name joined to the true dream does create a new reality. The object does change into something else, because we make it change. We manufacture realities.

back home.. the tablecloth of civilization makes us forget the already painted pine it covers! ([50], Zenith trans.)

I'm convinced that in a perfect, civilized world there would be no other art but prose.

In another age we mastered the physical ocean, thereby creating universal civilization; now we will master the psychological ocean, emotion, mother human nature, thereby creating intellectual civilization.

What would become of the world if we were human? If man really felt, there would be no civilization. Art is a refuge for the sensibility that action was obliged to forget.

Perhaps the novel is a more perfect life and reality, which God creates through us. Perhaps we live only to create it. It seems that civilization exists only to produce art and literature; words are what speak for it and remain. How do we know that these extra-human figures aren't truly real? It tortures my mind to think this might be the case

Civilization consists in giving an inappropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. And in fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so.

There's no better sign that a civilization has reached its height than the awareness, in its members, of the futility of all effort, given that we're ruled by implacable laws, which nothing can repeal or obstruct.

GörünüÅŸe bak?l?rsa uygarl?klar s?rf sanat ve edebiyat üretmek için var, kelimelerse onlardan bize kalan, bizimle konuÅŸan ÅŸeyler.

No sé si es a mí a quien le sucede, si a todos los que la civilización hizo nacer por segunda vez. Pero me parece que para mí, o para los que sienten como yo, lo artificial ha pasado a ser lo natural, y es lo natural lo que es extraño. No digo bien: lo artificial no ha pasado a ser lo natural; lo natural ha pasado a ser lo diferente

Cuando los dioses ya no existían y Cristo no había aparecido aún, hubo un momento único, desde Cicerón hasta Marco Aurelio, en que sólo estuvo el hombre.

I've always been fascinated by history.

No civilization on the brink of collapse has ever changed fast enough to avert collapse.

At the birth of society and civilisation I find a religious landscape littered with feisty female deities who make wisdom their business.

The earth is a fickle place for all life, not least the human project of civilization.

Nature made the fields and man the cities.

Because civilizations are finite, in the life of each of them there comes a moment when the center ceases to hold. What keeps them at such times from disintegration is not legions but language.

Fire is our first form of technology.

Archaeology holds all the keys to understanding who we are and where we come from.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

As a culture or a civilisation, we are a bit juvenile; it's like 'Oh, I have all this power, whoa, this is so cool, I can transform the earth and I can produce all this wealth. But we're blinded by our success in a naive way. There's more to life, actually, and I think the sustainability issue is also helpful in reminding us about that.

I lay this down as a fundamental proposition, which I do not think will be denied, that whoever controls the taxation and trade policy of a country controls its destiny and the entire character of its civilization.

Whoever uplifts civilization is rich though he die penniless, and future generations will erect his monument.