A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
Ariel DurantRead
The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization.
Interpretation
As technology advances, human creativity and effort shape civilization more than geography.
This quote emphasizes the diminishing role of geography in influencing civilization as technology advances. While natural features may create opportunities, it is ultimately the human imagination, leadership, and industriousness that are responsible for transforming potential into reality, highlighting the importance of human agency in shaping society.
In practice
In a speech about innovation, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of creativity over location.
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
I don't think there's an interesting boundary between philosophy and science. Science is totally beholden to philosophy. There are philosophical assumptions in science and there's no way to get around that.
With all of the history of war, and the human race's history unfortunately has been a good deal more war than peace, with nuclear weapons distributed all through the world, and available, and the strong reluctance of any people to accept defeat, I see the possibility in the 1970's of the President of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons.
They are lonely. I'm not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars.
Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species—including man—crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.
The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king's power or, later, people's power.
City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
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