Quotes on Civilization

Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors--is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. This great road has no final destination. The journey itself is the reward.

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.

There's no way that music could ever go down the tubes. I can't imagine a civilization without music. When you realize today that music is such a part of people's lives. And will always be, really.

Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.

There is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man. A close connection between race and personality has never been established.

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.

Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated.

The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization.

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me

A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.

I don't care two hoots about civilization. I want to wander in the wild.

The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us

When one group rules another, the relationship between the two is political. When such an arrangement is carried out over a long period of time it develops an ideology (feudalism, racism, etc.). All historical civilizations are patriarchies: their ideology is male supremacy.

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.