Advanced Civilization Quotes

• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Technology, Possible And Impossible

  Letter to the editor, Science, 19 Jan. 1968.

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• Statistically it's a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they're so advanced they're even doing interstellar travel. I believe it's possible they even came here.

  Story Musgrave

  Believe, Civilization, Form

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• We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.

  George Carlin

  Rain, Civilization, Space

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Stupid, Book, Reading

  Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, Center for the Book, Authors' League of America (1980). “The Book: A Lecture Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Authors' League of America, Presented at the Library of Congress October 17, 1979”, Library of Congress

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• Several days in a row we sighted groups of metallic, saucer-shaped vehicles at great altitudes over the base Germany, 1951 and we tried to get close to them, but they were able to change direction faster than our fighters. I do believe UFOs exist and that the truly unexplained ones are from some other technically advanced civilization.

  Gordon Cooper

  Believe, Civilization, Groups

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• Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.

  Bill Gates

  Civilization, Energy

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• Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Book, Civilization, Literature History

  Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, Center for the Book, Authors' League of America (1980). “The Book: A Lecture Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Authors' League of America, Presented at the Library of Congress October 17, 1979”, Library of Congress

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• As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.

  John Dewey

  Art, Civilization, Long

  John Dewey, Debra Morris, Ian Shapiro (1993). “The Political Writings”, p.93, Hackett Publishing

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• Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Literature History, Civilization

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• It seems to me far more likely that an advanced civilization would communicate inter dimensionally and telepathically.

  Terence McKenna

  Civilization, Communicate, Seems

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• Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization.

  Greg Bear

  Believe, Technology, Civilization

  Greg Bear (2014). “The Forge of God”, p.246, Open Road Media

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• I think we overrate ourselves in terms of our abilities and capacities. I mean, just because you can build a really swell bridge doesn't, to my way of thinking, mean that you're an advanced civilization.

  George Carlin

  Mean, Thinking, Civilization

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• The tendency of an advanced civilization is in truth monarchy.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Civilization, Tendencies, Monarchy

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• The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. It has not been accepted, because we've been in an anthropocentric era.

  Story Musgrave

  Intelligent, Civilization, Looks

  "NASA Distinguished Service Medal". The Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• Cardinal Arithmetics is much older than Number Theory. People used to exchange things way before there were numbers. Expressing numbers like 762 is already a sign of a very advanced civilization.

  Saharon Shelah

  Science, Civilization, Numbers

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• It's worth remembering that all technology leaves a footprint. For example, our own technology is leaving a footprint in terms of global warming, which could be detected from a long way away. One assumes that a very advanced civilization that has been around maybe millions and millions of years would have an even bigger footprint that might extend beyond its planet to its immediate astronomical environment.

  Paul Davies

  Technology, Years, Civilization

  "Big Think Interview With Paul Davies". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. April 15, 2010.

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• For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory.

  Werner Herzog

  Memories, Civilization, Serious

  "Werner Herzog: ‘Film Is Not the Art of Scholars, But of Illiterates’". Interview with Leticia Kentsept, www.nytimes.com. September 11, 1977.

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• Lying under an acacia tree with the sound of the dawn around me, I realized more clearly the facts that man should never overlook: that the construction of an airplane, for instance, is simple when compared [with] a bird; that airplanes depend on an advanced civilization, and that were civilization is most advanced, few birds exist. I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Lying, Airplane, Simple

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