Civilization Quotes - Page 3

• In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Funny, Humor, Government

  "The Devil's Dictionary". Book by Ambrose Bierce, 1911.

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• The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Gun, Religion, Three

  Critical and Miscellaneous Essays "The State of German Literature" (1838)

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• Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Philosophical, Play, Debauchery

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1956). “The Modern Temper”

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• You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.

  Will Rogers

  Death, War, History

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 23 Dec. 1929

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• In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Wisdom, Kings, Men

  Desiderius Erasmus, William Watson Barker (2001). “The Adages of Erasmus”, p.276, University of Toronto Press

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• Put your shoulder to the wheel.

  Aesop

  Life, Fables, Wheels

  Ann McGovern, Aesop, Arthur Geisert (1990). “Aesop's Fables”, p.24, Scholastic Inc.

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• Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education... no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

  Abraham Flexner

  Education, Peace, Money

  Abraham Flexner (1994). “Universities: American, English, German”, p.302, Transaction Publishers

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• Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

  John Burroughs

  Years, Religion, Done

  John Burroughs (1904). “The Writings of John Burroughs”

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• Civilization is the making of civil persons.

  John Ruskin

  Literature, Persons

  John Ruskin (1867). “Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne. Twenty-five letters to a working man of Sunderland on the laws of work”, p.197

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• The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Honesty, Integrity, Character

  The House of the Dead (1862) (translation by Constance Garnett) See Pearl S. Buck 2; Ramsey Clark 1; Humphrey 3; Samuel Johnson 69; Helen Keller 4

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• All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

  Gerald Durrell

  Writing, Progress, World

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• Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.

  John Boyd Orr

  Stimulus, Adjustment, New Knowledge

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• We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Way, Kind, Veneer

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• While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Land, People, Environmental

  "The Des Moines Register" Newspaper, July 8, 1979.

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• Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

  Mao Zedong

  Military, Gun, Chinese Revolution

  Speech at sixth plenary session of Central Committee, Communist Party, Yan'an, China, 6 Nov. 1938

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• Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people's hearts. Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human brain with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human heart with compassion. This is what the real role of religion is.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Real, Heart

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• The price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.

  Sigmund Freud

  Loss, Guilt, Pay

  Sigmund Freud (2015). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, p.208, Broadview Press

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• We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Atheist, Intellectual

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.45, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There never was a good knife made of bad steel.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Character, Knives

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• All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players.

  William Shakespeare

  Friendship, Birthday, Men

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 2, sc. 7, l. 139

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• Our use of the phrase 'The Dark Ages' to cover the period from 600 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe. [...] From India to Spain, the brilliant civilisation of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilisation, but quite the contrary. [...] To us it seems that West-European civilisation is civilisation, but this is a narrow view.

  Bertrand Russell

  Islamic, Views, West

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.325, Routledge

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• The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

  Oscar Wilde

  Insecure, Machines, World

  "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (1891)

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• The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.

  Mercy Otis Warren

  Lust, Degrees, Arbitrary

  Mercy Otis Warren (1805). “History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution: Interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations”, p.5

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• But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness - each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked - each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.

  Herbert Butterfield

  Self, Giving, Hatred

  Herbert Butterfield (1953). “Christianity, Diplomacy and War”, London : Epworth Press

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• Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Art, Philosophy, History

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard A. Posner (1997). “The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”, p.9, University of Chicago Press

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