Quotes About Civilization

The World's Fair was the precursor to theme parks like Disneyworld, and the really sort of cheap, superficial promotional architecture that you see everywhere in the U.S. I think there's a danger when you start creating a civilisation that isn't meant to last.

This was a revolution even more radical than the 1917 Bolshevik event, said Rieff. For the first time, humankind was seeking to create a civilization based on the negation of any binding transcendent order.

We live, contented and safe, with the idea that in a civilized country, in the mostly cultured and democratic environment of our times, such a coercive regime is impossible. We forget that in unstable countries, a certain political structure can lead to indoctrination and terror, where individual elements and stages of brainwashing are already implemented. This, at first, is quite inconspicuous. However, often in a very short time, it can develop into a full undemocratic totalitarian system.26

Las decisiones que tomamos hoy tendrán consecuencias en las vidas de nuestros descendientes, nación y civilización. Jesucristo prometió que el poder del infierno no derrotaría a su Iglesia, pero no dijo que no vencería a la Iglesia en Occidente. Depende de nosotros y de las decisiones que tomemos aquí y ahora.

La pérdida de la religión cristiana es la causa de la fragmentación que Occidente lleva padeciendo de un tiempo a esta parte y que se está acelerando últimamente. ¿Qué ha pasado? Podemos destacar cinco hitos históricos que han sacudido la civilización occidental a lo largo de los siete últimos siglos y que la han despojado de su fe ancestral:

En otras palabras, nuestra cultura actual está basada en el culto al deseo, y en lugar de enseñarnos a qué debemos renunciar si queremos seguir perteneciendo a esta civilización, nos dice que, como seres autónomos con capacidad de elección, debemos desprendernos de las antiguas prohibiciones para descubrir el sentido y el propósito de nuestra existencia.

the urban space was dominated by the imposing rock known as the Acropolis

the world's first functioning democracy is usually said to have been created in Athens during the years 508–507 BCE.

One by one, the great cities of the east were either sacked by the Persians or surrendered:

Crete is home to an advanced civilisation that will be dubbed 'Minoan'

The Minoans at this time had spread their influence right across the southern Aegean.

previous centuries by the Phoenicians living on the Levantine seaboard.

But in 1500 BCE, they are not ruled directly from Hattusa.

One ethnos that never did adopt the polis system was Macedonia.

This is the kingdom of the Hittites.

the distant origin of the Greek language may reach all the way back to the beginning of the period that we call the Neolithic

the distant origin of the Greek language may reach all the way back to the beginning of the period that we call the Neolithic, or New Stone Age.

perhaps even thousands, before our imagined Aegean dawn in the year 1500 BCE.

that had ruled there between about 1600 and 1450 BCE.

there are many who date the end of 'classical' Greek civilisation to the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE.

In fact, all known societies above the very primitive level have been slave societies—even many of the Northwest American Indian tribes had slaves long before Columbus's voyage.46 Amid this universal slavery, only one civilization ever rejected human bondage: Christendom. And it did it twice!

The European Middle Ages collected innovations from all over the world, especially from China, and built them into a new unity which formed the basis of our modern civilization.

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

The Beats, like their successors in the Sixties, have often been described as 'idealists'. But fantasies of total gratification are not the product of idealism. They arise from a narcissism that, finding the world unequal to its desires, retreats into a realm of heedless self-absorption. Modesty, convention, and self-restraint then appear as the enemies rather than as the allies of humanity. In this sense, the Beat generation marks a step away from civilization.