Civilization Quotes - Page 69

The saddest object in civilization, and to my mind the greatest confession of its failure, is the man who can work, who wants work, and who is not allowed to work.

Whether we ever get to know about them or not, there are very probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine. Their technical achievements would seem as supernatural to us as ours would seem to a Dark Age peasant transported to the twenty-first century. Imagine his response to a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, a hydrogen bomb or a jumbo jet.

...what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.

It is a disturbing fact that Western civilization, which claims to have achieved the highest standard of health in history, finds itself compelled to spend ever-increasing sums for the control of disease.

I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.

Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.

Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.

The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.

Civilization, to be worthy of the name, must afford other methods of settling human differences than those of blood letting.

In Kali yuga, whole atmosphere is surcharged with faithlessness, Material sense gratification is standard of civilization.

After long centuries, agrarian civilization is weakening. Is sufficient attention being devoted to the arrangement and improvement of the life of the country people, whose inferior and at times miserable economic situation provokes the flight to the unhappy crowded conditions of the city outskirts, where neither employment nor housing awaits them?

The developing world can just do things that are extensive or horizontal, that basically copy. The developed world needs to do things that are intensive or vertical, where we take our civilization to the next level.

Civilization has always been a bust.

Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break.

The planetary phase of history has begun, but the future shape of global society remains profoundly uncertain. Though perhaps improbable, a shift toward a planetary civilization of enriched lives, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability is still possible.

For the grand and inescapable tradition of western literary classics confronts us with fundamental choices over our understanding of words, reading and art, as well as citizenship, civilization, faith, and the whole notion of the true, the good, and the faithful.

On humanitarian intervention in general, I guess my view is not unlike the view that was attributed to Gandhi, accurately or not, when he was supposedly asked what he thought about western civilization. He is supposed to have said that he thought it would be a good idea. Similarly, humanitarian intervention would be a good idea, in principle.

The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said "A civilization is judged only in its decline." That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.

Heterosexual marriage is the heart of our civilization.

I want to say unequivocally that while I cherish every person who comes from anywhere, who comes here legally and seeks to pursue happiness, and I hope all of them decide to stay and become American citizens, but I want them to become American. And part of becoming American involved English. It is vital historically to assert and establish that English is the common language at the heart of our civilization.

Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish.

Well, right now, I'm very fascinated with 1920s Berlin. I mean, probably the more interesting thing would be to go to the beginning of civilization or precivilization - like polytheistic times. It would be interesting to see what came before modern religion and culture - what circumstances created the environment or the need for it.

Without fathers you would have no civilization.

In our present high state of civilization, people are so much alike, that anything at all odd comes on one with the freshness and character of an antique coin among smooth shillings.

In the last analysis civilization itself is measured by the way in which children will live and what chance they will have in the world