Civilisation Quotes - Page 10

• Personally I think that private property has a right to be defended. Our civilisation is built up on property, and can only be defended by private property.

  Winston Churchill

  Thinking, Property, Built

  Sir Winston Churchill (1954). “Sir Winston Churchill: a self-portrait”

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• As Colin Wilson has written, "modern civilisation, with its mechanised rigidity is producing more outsiders than ever before-people who are too intelligent to do some repetitive job, but not intelligent enough to make their own terms with society." Those "intelligent enough" to make their own terms with society are what we will later refer to as artists of life. The outsider views himself as a product of a culture he rejects-the artist views himself as a culture-builder.

  Laurence Boldt

  Jobs, Artist, Intelligent

  Laurence G. Boldt (1999). “Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design”, p.94, Penguin

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• Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present.

  Carl Jung

  Spiritual, Impact, People

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• Marriage: This terrible insoluble problem of civilisation, which created all the evil. This unnatural state of union in disunion which exacted impossibilities and forced together elements absolutely and inherently antagonistic to each other!

  Rosa Campbell Praed

  Evil, Together, Elements

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• The real cause of the great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabian Empire, is a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples .... The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought .... The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of transformation.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Real, Fall, Memorable

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• I think the degree of a nation's civilisation may be measured by the degree of enlightenment of its women.

  Helen Keller

  Thinking, Enlightenment, Degrees

  Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan (1904). “The story of my life”

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• We must delve deep into history the better to engage a true dialogue of civilisations. Fear of the present can impose upon the past its own biased vision.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Past, Vision, Dialogue

  "Why I'm going to meet the Pope" by Tariq Ramadan, www.theguardian.com. November 3, 2008.

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• I like looking at the countryside as well as anyone... a little countryside goes a long way, but it's almost like the DNA of a civilisation is in its cities.

  Jonathan Meades

  Dna, Cities, Long

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I'm sick. I've eaten civilisation and I'm sick.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sick

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• letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Educational, Letters, Lasts

  Thomas Jefferson (1861). “Correspondence”, p.303

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• Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.

  Yehudi Menuhin

  Education, Children, Kindness

  "Just for Animals" quoted in "Souls Like Ourselves" by Andrea Wiebers and David Wiebers, Rochester, MN: Sojourn Press, (p. 16), 2000.

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• Western civilisation needs a complete overhaul or it will fall apart one day or another. It has realised the most complete perversion of any rational order of things. Reign of matter, of gold, of machine, of number, it no longer possesses breath, or liberty, or light.

  Julius Evola

  Fall, Light, Order

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• I love fashion, beauty, glamour. It's the mark of civilisation.

  David LaChapelle

  Fashion, Glamour, Mark

  "David LaChapelle: 'Fashion, beauty and glamour are the mark of civilisation'" by Elizabeth Day, www.theguardian.com. February 18, 2012.

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• I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

  Leslie Charteris

  Laughter, Believe, Fighting

  "The Last Hero".

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• It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.

  C. L. R. James

  People, Deception, Sacred

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• Modern civilisation is complicated and artificial. Simple folk live in a world of love and peace. Let no one hate another or harm another.

  Sivananda

  Hate, Simple, World

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• I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel the civilisation of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions the old world is destroyed. That has to be understood. Ancient Hindu India was destroyed.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Thinking, India, World

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• Newspaper : A device unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.

  George Bernard Shaw

  America, World, Modern

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• As in the fine arts, the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilisation is marked by a gradual succession of triumphs over the rude materialities of nature, so in the art of cookery is the progress gradual from the earliest and simplest modes, to those of the most complicated and refined.

  Isabella Beeton

  Art, Civilization, Rude

  Isabella Beeton, Nicola Humble (2008). “Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management: Abridged Edition”, p.57, Oxford University Press

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• Egyptologists, skilled in piecing together the papyri of lost civilisations, suddenly discovered that the same talent could be applied to working out the pattern of German radio traffic.

  Robert Harris

  History, Work Out, Together

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• No civilisation, not even that of ancient Greece, has ever undergone such a continuous and profound process of change as Western Europe has done during the last 900 years. It is impossible to explain this fact in purely economic terms by a materialistic interpretation of history. The principle of change has been a spiritual one and the progress of Western civilisation is intimately related to the dynamic ethos of Western Christianity, which has gradually made Western man conscious of his moral responsibility and his duty to change the world.

  Christopher Dawson

  Spiritual, Responsibility, Men

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• A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Civilization, Tree, Alive

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• Without the law, you can't have society. But without the arts, you can't have civilisation

  Julian Burnside

  Art, Law

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• It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.

  William Winwood Reade

  Egypt, Soldier, Citizens

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.24

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• The French have made conversation their claim to civilisation.

  Theodore Zeldin

  Claims, Made, Conversation

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