Civilization Quotes - Page 28

• I pray God that we shall never use our physical prowess to oppress the human race, but we will use our strength, physically, morally and otherwise to preserve humanity and civilization.

  Marcus Garvey

  Race, Humanity, Use

  Marcus Garvey (2015). “Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey”, p.12, Ravenio Books

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• On Mars, the crumbling remains of ancient civilizations may be found, mutely testifying to the one-time glory of a dying world.

  P. E. Cleator

  Dying, Crumbling, Mars

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• We can either build a Star Trek future, in which our civilization rises to new heights, or descend into a Mad Max world. It is up to us.

  Vivek Wadhwa

  Stars, Mad, Max

  "The Coming Problem of Our iPhones Being More Intelligent Than We Are" by Vivek Wadhwa, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 27, 2015.

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• [I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Roots, Facts

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

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• The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.

  William Ralph Inge

  Boredom, Revolution, Causes

  'End of an Age' (1948) ch. 6

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• Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal.

  William Ralph Inge

  Disease

  "The Idea of Progress". Romanes Lecture by William Ralph Inge, May 27, 1920.

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• We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

  Paul Valery

  Knows, Mortals

  "La Crise de l'Esprit". Book by Paul Valery, 1919.

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• People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Philosophy, Selfish, Struggle

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p. 8), 1949.

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• Material civilization, nay, even luxury, is necessary to create work for the poor. Bread! Bread! I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven!

  Bill Vaughan

  Believe, Luxury, Giving

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• At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.

  Charles de Gaulle

  Roots, Leisure, Belief

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• It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Kings, Women, Government

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• If the family goes, so goes our civilization.

  Ronald Reagan

  Family, Ifs

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

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• When it turned on the Jew, Christianity and European civilization turned on the incarnation - albeit an incarnation often wayward and unaware - of its own best hopes.

  George Steiner

  Christianity, Hoping For The Best, Jew

  George Steiner (1974). “In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture”, p.45, Yale University Press

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• That’s what painting does; it organizes vision in a certain way or suggests that certain things be paid attention to and certain other things not be paid attention to. It functions in that way to a certain extent in our civilization.

  Jasper Johns

  Vision, Doe, Attention

  "New Again: Jasper Johns". Interview with Philip Smith, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 9, 2015.

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• If we're thinking about old civilizations, those that formed a long time ago and there were stars and planets around long before Earth even existed, then these are going to be towards the center of the galaxy. That is the place to look if you think there are ancient civilizations that have made beacons or some other way of attracting our attention.

  Paul Davies

  Stars, Thinking, Long

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the balance is already shifting—force is losing its weight and mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age less masculine, and more permeated with the feminine ideals—or, to speak more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of civilization will be more evenly balanced.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Spiritual, Strong, Past

  "The Power of the Feminine Self: Manhood Liberated from Violence Against Women" by Payam Akhavan, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 18, 2015.

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• When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims -- national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.

  Benjamin Netanyahu

  War, Impact, Evil

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• Whatever fosters the growth of civilization works at the same time against war.

  Sigmund Freud

  War, Growth, Against War

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey (1953). “The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud”

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• An idea is only an idea if it causes unease, debate and reflection. By that standard, Thomas Homer-Dixon's concept of an 'ingenuity gap' is truly a new idea. I can think of no other new concept that so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization than the 'ingenuity gap'. Homer-Dixon has found a way to unite all of our concerns about economics, war, population growth, complexity, etc. under a single heading. He is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  War, Writing, Reflection

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• Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.

  Samuel Smiles

  Character, Men, Individual

  Samuel Smiles (1873). “Self-help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance”, p.18

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• The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Fighting, Confusion

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• The press, watchful with more than the hundred eyes of Argus, strong with more than the hundred arms of Briareus, not only guards all the conquests of civilization, but leads the way to future triumphs.

  Charles Sumner

  Strong, Eye, Triumph

  Charles Sumner (2016). “The Complete Works of Charles Sumner”, p.593, Library of Alexandria

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• The smart people who are straight are involved in simply the media management of what has turned into a slow apocalypse, spreading starvation, exacerbated class differences, toxified agriculture, so forth and so on. I don't believe the Establishment thinks there are solutions. Their policy is basically the management of panic, which is hardly a forward moving approach to the adventure of human civilization.

  Terence McKenna

  Smart, Moving, Believe

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• Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, History, Principles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.443, Harvard University Press

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• The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability.

  Ernst Mayr

  Believe, Issues, Events

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