Civilization Quotes - Page 39

• The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

  George Bancroft

  Government, Mind, Progress

  "Literary and Historical Miscellanies". "The Office of the People in Art, Government and Religion", pp. 426-427. Book by George Bancroft, 1855.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wine has been with us since the beginning of civilization. It is the temperate, civilized, sacred, romantic mealtime beverage recommended in the Bible. Wine has been praised for centuries by statesmen, philosophers, poets, and scholars. Wine in moderation is an integral part of our culture, heritage and gracious way of life.

  Robert Mondavi

  Wine, Culture, Heritage

  16 Copy quote

• The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation: The doctrine of a supreme, intelligent sovereign of the universe, I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

  John Adams

  Believe, Men, Intelligent

  John Adams (1965). “The John Adams papers”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us. Add weapons of mass destruction to this diabolical clockwork, and you have . . . a recipe for the fall of civilization.

  Sam Harris

  Fall, Mass Destruction, Religion

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.26, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Civilization itself . . . can easily be swept aside when mob passions are aroused.

  Steve Allen

  Passion, Evil

  10 Copy quote

• Among the illusions which have invested our civilization is an absolute belief that the solutions to our problems must be a more determined application of rationally organized expertise... The reality is that our problems are largely the product of that application.

  Voltaire

  Reality, Risk, Determined

  24 Copy quote

• In basic terms, civilization is dependent upon the spontaneity and fulfillment of the individual. Your civilization is in sad straits. Not because you are allowed spontaneity or fulfillment to individuals, but because you are denied it, and because your institutions are based upon that premise.

  Seth

  Spontaneity, Individual, Institutions

  4 Copy quote

• The health of our home planet and the survival of our species will only be secured through the use of space resources and the expansion of Earth's economic sphere to the Moon and beyond. Creating an off-Earth economy and multi-planet civilization will safeguard the long term prospects of humanity.

  Bob Richards

  Home, Moon, Creating

  4 Copy quote

• All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself civilization, in a word is the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which characterizes the animal world from which he made his escape.

  Henry Miller

  Lying, Creativity, Men

  Henry Miller (2016). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.8, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Four years of world war, at a cost in human suffering which our minds are mercifully too limited to imagine, led to the very clear realization that international anarchy must be abandoned if civilization was to survive.

  Arthur Henderson

  War, Years, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• The measure of progress of civilization is the progress of the people.

  George Bancroft

  People, Progress

  10 Copy quote

• A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, one that puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to sadistic work building more and more destructive weapons, is no civilization at all. It needs a radical transformation from the heart outwards. It needs to outgrow and outlaw war just as in the last century it outlawed slavery. The human race has outgrown war, but it hardly knows it yet.

  Matthew Fox

  War, Heart, Race

  4 Copy quote

• The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.

  David Bohm

  Unbroken, Way, Separation

  11 Copy quote

• The word civilization to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.

  Henry Miller

  Believe, Mind, Age

  4 Copy quote

• Insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat.

  Don Marquis

  Men, Thinking, Views

  Don Marquis (2013). “The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel”, p.71, Doubleday

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.

  John Adams

  Art, Philosophy, Character

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I”, p.210, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• From stoplights to skyscrapers, turn anywhere in civilization and you will see imagination at work. It's in our inventions, advances and remedies and how a single parent masterminds each day. Imagination is boundless, surrounds us and resides in us all.

  Geoffrey S. Fletcher

  Imagination, Parent, Each Day

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

  Sam Harris

  Buddhist, Taken, Arguing

  "Killing the Buddha". Shambhala Sun, March 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The human race is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive night ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization.

  Jack London

  Night, Race, Primitive

  Jack London (2015). “The Scarlet Plague”, p.12, Booklassic

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life creeps slowly upward.... When some forgotten inventor of the older world smote his rival or enemy with a branch of wood and found that it was good and thereafter made a practice of smiting rivals and enemies with branches of wood, then, and on that day, artificiality may be said to have begun. Then, and on that day, was begun a revolution destined to change the history of life. Then, and on that day, was laid the cornerstone of that most tremendous of artifices, CIVILIZATION!

  Jack London

  Practice, Enemy, History Of Life

  Jack London (2014). “The Kempton-Wase Letters”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon environment until it becomes machine-like in its regularity. The objectionable is eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen. One is not even made wet by the rain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of stalking about gruesome and accidental, becomes a prearranged pageant, moving along a well-oiled groove to the family vault, where the hinges are kept from rusting and the dust from the air is swept continually away.

  Jack London

  Rain, Moving, Air

  Jack London (2015). “Love of life and Other Stories by Jack London”, p.68, Editora Dracaena

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

  Jerome Frank

  Quality, Tests, Moral

  Jerome Frank (1977). “A man's reach: the philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank”, Greenwood Pub Group

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts.

  Jerome Frank

  Doubt, Lines, Facts

  Jerome Frank (1930). “Law and the Modern Mind”, p.261, Transaction Publishers

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every bride and groom in the history of civilization has gained weight after their wedding day. It is only a matter of time until archaeologists unearth a married caveman who's wearing a pair of old tux pants that were so tight he couldn't get the zipper closed.

  Peter Scott

  Zippers, Matter, Pants

  Peter Scott (2008). “There's a Spouse in My House: A Humorous Journey Through the First Years of Marriage”, p.72, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium suggests something soporific, numbing, dulling. Too often religion has been an aphrodisiac for horror, a Benzedrine for bestiality. At its best it has lifted spirits and raised spires. At its worst it has turned entire civilizations into cemeteries.

  Phillip Adams

  People, Atheism, Opiates

  9 Copy quote