Quotes about Civilization

It is a double-edged makeshift to entrust an individual or a group of individuals with the authority to resort to violence. The enticement implied is too tempting for a human being. The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty. The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek πá½¹λις [city-state] down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.

Call it the fault of civilization.God isn't compatible with macinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilizaition has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked if...

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.

"What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth... and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife."

Evolution made civilization steward of this planet.  A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite.  So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love.

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization.  But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.

And the wind shall say "Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

Not everything in man's life is summed up in the problem of food. Anyone who thinks that a civilization can be founded on bread alone makes a great mistake. No matter how much bread there is, it cannot produce a man: it can only nourish him. Life exists before food. Man's life comes from the very origin of life. Therefore civilization does not follow the forms of production. All social life follows the action of life.

What passes for education, culture or maturity in most minds is merely how individuals want to think of themselves, a contrived egocentric self-concept, not actual and effective principles and values. This is what is known in the cliche as the "veneer" of civilization.

From that point on I visited the bottle every day at dusk. After the morning with Alexis and the afternoon in the sun, this became the third highlight of my day. I never ate more than a milk ball or two and at most half a licorice twist. It was the ritual that counted, the decadent taste of civilization in that strange fruitless Eden where I was allowed to eat practically anything, so long as it wasn’t food.

It has often been declared that the human mind could never comprehend God. That statement has been based upon the assumption that the reason we could never comprehend God is that our senses could not detect God.
It is true that we cannot see God but we can KNOW Him. And therein is the essence of New Age thinking. The next hundred years will see as great a spiritual advance in the culture of our civilization as it has seen physically during the past hundred years. That which we cannot see, we can KNOW. We can see the bodies of men but we cannot see man, for the supreme Being within man is invisible. He cannot be seen. He can only be known. For the same reason we cannot see God but we can know Him, and we can know the nature of God by knowing His laws and creative processes.
When we know the nature of God sufficiently to reflect His nature in us, we become God to the extent of our ability to reflect His nature in us. By knowing the secret of Light, we will know the mystery of life and death – of reincarnation, of matter and space, and the relationship of suns to planets.
The more we know the Light, the more we shall realize our purpose in manifesting that Light gloriously. Every moment of life in the Light is a moment glorification in the awareness of our omnipotence in manifesting the Light.
Someone once asked Toscanini’s son: “What was the highest point in your father’s life?” The answer was: “Every point in it is his highest point. He lives gloriously and fully every moment of his life, whether conducting an orchestra or peeling an orange.”
That is what we must do when we fully know the purposefulness of life – live it gloriously by living it ecstatically. We can live it ecstatically only as we know the ecstatic nature of God and become like Him through being continually inspired by communion with Him. To become like Him, we must become aware of our identity with Him. We must know Him as Creator of all that is, and in so doing know ourselves as creator of all that is.

"Do you think that civilization advances because of things written in books? Not a bit of what is written in books ever got there until after the thought of it happened in someone's mind. Someone first had to collect it from space, or recollect it from its electrical pattern to which he (or she) had been attuned. The book is but a record of what has already happened."

For civilization to survive, the human race must remain civilized.

The sum total of each man's giving determines the standard of man's civilization.

The sum total of each man's giving determines the standard of man's civilization.

No civilization can exist part free and part slave.

..We have never had any other kind of civilization. It has always been that way. There has always been a division of man. There has always been the conqueror and conquered--the master and slave--the ruler and the ruled--the oppressor and the oppressed. There has never been content nor unity. There has been only discontent and disunity.

This civilisation is the work of man, who high-handedly and ignorant of the true workings of Nature, has created a world without meaning or foundation, which now threatens to destroy him, for through his behaviour and his activities, he, who should be her master, has disturbed Natureäs inherent unity.

The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built.

Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos.

One of the signs of a healthy civilization is the existence of a relatively clear language in which everyone can participate in their own way. The sign of a sick civilization is the growth of an obscure closed language that seeks to prevent participation.

THE SUM OF THE WHOLE MATTER IS THIS - OUR CIVILIZATION CANNOT SURVIVE MATERIALLY UNLESS IT BE REDEEMED SPIRITUALLY.

History's villains are more easily recognized in retrospect. In an article published in 1935 and reprinted in 1937, Winston Churchill expressed a curious ambivalence towards the German chancellor prior to the outbreak of war: We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation. . . .

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.

We have a system which, though far from perfect, is strong with idealism. It gives elbow room for men of all races and all beliefs. It is vital and dynamic. And it works. We have the means of shaping the world in our pattern. If we do, freedom will be assured for all men. The decision is in the hands of this generation. It is a challenge to our political competence. For Western civilization it is the greatest challenge of all time.

The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep. Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are a member of a tour visiting Greece. The group goes to the Parthenon. It is a bore. Few people even bother to look - it looked better in the brochure. So people take half a look, mostly take pictures, remark on the serious erosion by acid rain. You are puzzled. Why should one of the glories and fonts of Western civilization, viewed under pleasant conditions - good weather, good hotel room, good food, good guide - be a bore? Now imagine under what set of circumstances a viewing of the Parthenon would not be a bore. For example, you are a NATO colonel defending Greece against a Soviet assault. You are in a bunker in dowtown Athens, binoculars propped on sandbags. It is dawn. A medium-range missile attack is under way. Half a million Greeks are dead. Two missiles bracket the Parthenon. The next will surely be a hit. Between columns of smoke, a ray of golden light catches the portico. Are you bored? Can you see the Parthenon?