Quotes on Civilization

I'm opposed to a lot of the time that we as a civilization have come to spend looking at screens. For my money, life is much delicious damn near everyplace but inside that screen.

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.

The human race has improved everything, but the human race.

The teachings of many faiths share much in common. And people of many faiths are united in our commitments to love our families, to protect our children, and to build a more peaceful world. In the coming year, let us resolve to seize opportunities to work together in a spirit of friendship and cooperation. Through our combined efforts, we can end terrorism and rid our civilization of the damaging effects of hatred and intolerance, ultimately achieving a brighter future for all.

The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.

Unless modern civilization is a failure, it is entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored people in America, to develop side by side in peace and mutual happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the culture of their common country.

The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.

A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue instead of being merely a de facto reality. The culture has been different. And secondly, the percentage of the world's population for whom such ascent was possible has gone up. But even though it has grown up, meritocratic ascent remains very much the attribute of a minority.

Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization.

[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.

It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

Oh Woman, come before us, before our eyes longing for beauty, and tired of the ugliness of civilization, come in simple tunics, letting us see the line and harmony of the body beneath, and dance for us. Dance us the sweetness of life. Give us again the sweetness and the beauty of the true dance, give us again the joy of seeing the simple unconscious pure body of a woman. Like a great call it has come, and women must hear it and answer it.

The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.

The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual. _x000D_ People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society. _x000D_ Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Human history began as an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.