Civilisation Quotes - Page 5

• After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world. Later, as the earth's span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space -- to another stopping place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. But there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Men, Vegetables, Civilization

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated)”, p.1404, Delphi Classics

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• Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilisation ... there has been only one-the triumph of Christianity -that can be called in the fullest sense a "revolution": a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good.

  David Bentley Hart

  Reality, Humanity, Vision

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• Moral improvement (or perfecting) require an evolution leading to a higher consciousness, which is the true torch of life; it is what we have failed too much to appreciate, and that which would be fatal to fail to appreciate any longer ("pluslongtemps", Fr.); For if we do not take it upon ourselves to remedy in time to the moral colapse (or bankruptcy) that already threaten, the whole civilisation will risks to disappear.

  African Spir

  Appreciate, Risk, Too Much

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 60), 1937.

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• Unless legal and illegal immigration is halted and reversed, European First World nations across all of Europe from Spain to Russia, North America, Australia and New Zealand - will be destroyed and have their very culture and civilisation changed to that of the Third World. Immigration is now the single most important issue facing all First World nations, and will determine whether Western Civilisation continues to exist or not.

  Arthur Kemp

  Russia, Europe, America

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• The direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but from what we can judge today of any civilisation. The type of man dominant today is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Taken, Men, Rising Up

  "The Revolt of the Masses". Book by José Ortega y Gasset. Chapter IX: "The Primitive and the Technical", 1929.

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• There can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is the story of civilisation. By it we can readily measure an important part of a people's progress.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Bridges, People, Doubt

  "Kurilpa Bridge". Book by Haig Beck, p. 72, 2012.

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• We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love. I am a specialist, God help me, in events in inner space and time, in experiences called thoughts, images, reveries, dreams, visions, hallucinations, dreams of memories, memories of dreams, memories of visions, dreams of hallucinations, refractions of refractions of refractions of that original Alpha and Omega of experience and reality, that Reality on whose repression, denial, splitting, projection, falsification, and general desecration and profanation our civilisation as much as anything is based.

  R. D. Laing

  Dream, Memories, Reality

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• From its first faint glimmerings, History shews Man's constant progress as a beast of prey. As such he conquers every land, subdues the fruit-fed races, founds mighty realms by subjugating other subjugators, forms states and sets up civilisations, to enjoy his prey at rest.

  Richard Wagner

  Men, Race, Land

  Richard Wagner (1897). “Religion and Art”, p.227, U of Nebraska Press

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• Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to accept as divine justice what is called human law.

  John Buchan

  Divine Justice, Law, Together

  John Buchan (2016). “JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more”, p.803, e-artnow

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• If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Distance, Aliens

  Richard Dawkins‏ @RichardDawkins, twitter.com. February 17, 2014.

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• Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?

  Herman Melville

  Moon, Missionary, Pagan

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4907, Delphi Classics

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• What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.

  Matthew Arnold

  Two, Interesting, Elements

  Matthew Arnold (2007). “Civilization in the United States”, p.190, Applewood Books

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• I am distinctly opposed to visibly arrogant and arbitrary extremes of government--but this is simply because I wish the safety of an artistic and intellectual civilisation to be secure, not because I have any sympathy with the coarse-grained herd who would menace the civilisation if not placated by sops.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Government, Safety, Intellectual

  H. P. Lovecraft (2010). “Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.105, Lulu.com

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• If the present civilisation does not acquire some stable moral fondations ("bases morales stables", Fr.), its existence will hardly be more assured than that of the civilisations that have preceeded it, and which have fallen (or collapse, or failed).

  African Spir

  Doe, Moral, Existence

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 41), 1937.

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• [T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Country, Believe, Men

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• The central industry of modern civilisation, tending, because of its control over materials, to spread into and ultimately incorporate older industries such as mining, smelting, oil- refining, textiles, rubber, building, and even agriculture in respect to fertilizers and food processing.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Oil, Agriculture, Textiles

  John Desmond Bernal (1965). “Science in history”

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• The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West. The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, Eastern and Western, must, as a matter of urgency, make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides.

  Aga Khan IV

  Real, Ignorance, Two

  Speech at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, www.akdn.org. October 17, 2007.

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• There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.

  Francis Galton

  Race, Class, Generations

  "Hereditary Genius". Book by Francis Galton, p. 414, 1869.

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• Generally speaking, an Indian university must regard itself as one of the living organs of national reconstruction. It must discover the best means of blending together both the spiritual and the material aspects of life. It must equip its alumni irrespective of caste, creed or sex, with individual fitness, not for its own sake, not for merely adorning varied occupations and professions, but in order to teach them how to merge their individuality in the common cause of advancing the progress and prosperity of their motherland and upholding the highest traditions of human civilisation.

  Syama Prasad Mukherjee

  Spiritual, Sex, Mean

  Speech delivered at Nagpur University Convocation on 5th December 1936, "Educational Speeches" by Dr. Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, A.Mukherjee & Co. (Private) Ltd., 2 College Square, Kolkata 700 012, 1959.

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• For neo-conservatism is a quintessentially Jewish project: a re-sanctification in everyday life of the core values of western civilisation, and the achievement of human potential through virtuous practice. The neo-cons' crucial insight is that public signals through law, custom and tradition are the key to getting people to behave well. And that is a Jewish insight.

  Melanie Phillips

  Keys, Law, Practice

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• Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilisation and lusty, famishing barbarism.

  Winston Churchill

  Islands, Years, Dying

  Winston Churchill (1995). “Churchill's History of the English-speaking Peoples”, Barnes & Noble

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• India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are being killed and imprisoned in their thousands. Theirs is a battle of the imagination, a battle for the redefinition of the meaning of civilisation, of the meaning of happiness, of the meaning of fulfilment.

  Arundhati Roy

  Fighting, People, Imagination

  "Arundhati Roy: 'The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution'". Interview with Arun Gupta, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2011.

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• The idea that war should be conducted within a moral framework may seem like a quaint medieval practice, but as speech separates humans from the apes, so morality separates civilisation from the barbarians.

  Eric Corley

  War, Practice, Ideas

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• Civilisation is only a pretense. In crisis we have become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and instead becoming the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone we will use the moment it comes close enough

  Orson Scott Card

  Enemy, Going Away, Wish

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• We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.

  Richard O'Brien

  America, Australia, Shapes

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