Quotes About Civilization

All the stuff that makes life worth living is produced privately, and all that the government does is slow down the progress of civilization and bring destruction and disaster wherever it goes.

It is in vain for us to devise schemes by which competition can be put out of civilized life. Competition is the condition of life.

Nonviolent nationalism is a necessary condition of corporate or civilized life.

In matters pertaining to the care of life there has been no marked gain over Greek and Roman antiquity.

In the last few centuries we've managed to reduce how much we kill each other, we've learned some basic lessons about public health, and life is relatively good for more people than ever before.

Our way of life is at stake, our grandchildren are at stake, the future of civilization is at stake.

In English the expression 'ancient Greece' includes the meaning of 'finished,' whereas for us Greece goes on living, for better or for worse; it is in life, has not expired yet.

I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer space.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by intertia.

The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

America's opioid epidemic is another warning light. Émile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, said that when societies hit a civilisational break the suicide rate soars.

Émile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, said that when societies hit a civilisational break the suicide rate soars.

By 1998, members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, an elite elected group sponsored by the federal government, were approaching complete atheism. Only 10 percent testified to a belief in either God or immortality. Among them were a scant 2 percent of the biologists. In modern civilizations, there is no overwhelming importance in the general populace to belong to an organized religion. Witness

The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.

Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind.

In modern industrialized countries, networks grew to a complexity that has proved bewildering to the Paleolithic mind we inherited. Our instincts still desire the tiny, united band-networks that prevailed during the hundreds of millennia preceding the dawn of history. Our instincts remain unprepared for civilization.

Out of the warlike peoples arose civilization, while the peaceful collectors and hunters were driven to the ends of the earth, where they are gradually being exterminated or absorbed, with only the dubious satisfaction of observing the nations which had wielded war so effectively to destroy them and to become great, now victimized by their own instrument.

States, the final step up in the cultural evolution of societies, have a centralized authority.

Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.

We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

We cannot properly grasp the dynamics of human social life unless we understand the role that intoxicants have played in making civilization possible.