Civilization Quotes - Page 43

Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.

The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in its imperial rhetoric, as a 'civilizing mission'.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: this triptych succinctly defines the attractiveness and superiority of Western civilization.

In the first half of the 20th Century, we lived through human disasters on a scale unimaginable. The Holocaust was once suggested would be the end of not only civilization, but art, too.

It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.

It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last forever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization-is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government, so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct.

But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely."

Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night.

If there is one beast in all the loathsome fauna of civilization I hate and despise it is a man of the world.

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

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

Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?

One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.

The discovery of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century implied the beginning of a return to a type of civilization dominated by the eye rather than the ear.

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?

I wish I could write a book that will be read for as long as our civilization lasts. I would value it much more highly than any business success if I could contribute to an understanding of the world in which we live or, better yet, if I could help to preserve the economic and political system that has allowed me to flourish as a participant.

The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individual.

Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.

Social intercourse -- a very limited thing in a half civilized country, becomes in our centers of civilization a great power. . .

Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?

I'm sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity.

Some of us worry about a resurgent Islam and its attendant complications for a decayed Western civilization; some of us worry about global warming. In twenty years' time, one of us will be proved right . . .

America became a great civilization thanks to a culture based on the value of having to earn almost everything an American got in life. As it abandons this value, it will become a mediocre civilization. And eventually it will not be America. It will be a large Sweden, and just as influential as the smaller one.

Addiction is the number one disease of civilization, and it's directly and indirectly related to all other diseases. Besides physical addictions to nicotine, alcohol, and other substances, there are psychological addictions, such as the addiction to work, sex, television, melodrama, and perfection.