Modern Civilization Quotes - Page 2

• The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart.

  Dean Koontz

  Dream, Struggle, Heart

  Dean Koontz (2007). “The Taking: A Novel”, p.143, Bantam

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• How much modern civilization has lost, I think, when they lost the awareness of the billions of stars overhead.

  Christopher Pike

  Stars, Thinking, Civilization

  Christopher Pike (2013). “Thirst: Thirst No. 1; Thirst No. 2; Thirst”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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• Modern civilization is largely devoted to the pursuit of the cult of delusion. There is no general information about the nature of mind. It is hardly ever written about by writers or intellectuals; modern philosophers do not speak of it directly; the majority of scientists deny it could possibly be there at all. It plays no part in popular culture: no one sings about it, no one talks about it in plays, and it's not on TV. We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Real, Believe, Buddhism

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• Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.

  William Morris

  Beautiful, Passion, Civilization

  William Morris (2012). “News from Nowhere”, p.7, Courier Corporation

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• A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while modern civilization is withdrawing accumulated solar capital at rates that will exhaust it in a tiny fraction of the time that was needed to create it.

  Vaclav Smil

  Civilization, Income, Analogies

  Vaclav Smil (2012). “Energy: A Beginner's Guide”, p.80, Oneworld Publications

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• An unhurried mind brings the capacity to make wise choices every day - choices of how we use our time, of where we place our resources and our love. I am not just talking about avoiding the rat race, but about a life full of an artistic beauty - a life that has almost vanished from modern civilization, but is quite within the reach of everyone.

  Eknath Easwaran

  Wise, Race, Talking

  Eknath Easwaran (2012). “Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down”, p.54, Nilgiri Press

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• Modern civilization has taught us to convert night into day and golden silence into brazen din and noise.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Night, Civilization, Taught Us

  Mahatma Gandhi (2011). “The Way to God: Selected Writings from Mahatma Gandhi”, p.54, North Atlantic Books

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• What interests me is to paint the kind of antisensitivity that impregnates modern civilization. I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward - neo-Zen and all that. Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

  Roy Lichtenstein

  Art, Thinking, Civilization

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• ...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.

  Alan Watts

  Technology, Civilization, Goal

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• With engaging prose, Engelman takes readers on a delightful journey?that both entertains and educates ? of modern civilization and women's central role to ensuring the economic and social well-being of their families, communities, nations and the global community.

  Geeta Rao Gupta

  Journey, Civilization, Community

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• One cannot deny that in former times man's life had been one of toil and hardship. It is correct to say, therefore, that modern civilization and the progress of science have greatly improved man's life and have brought comfort and ease in their trail.

  Haile Selassie

  Men, Civilization, Progress

  Interview with editor of "The Voice of Ethiopia", April 5, 1948.

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• The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between modern civilization, which is the Kingdom of Satan, and the ancient civilization, which is the Kingdom of God.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Government, Civilization

  Mahatma Gandhi (2010). “Hind Swaraj”, p.8, Rajpal & Sons

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• No greater tragedy exists in modern civilization than the aged, worn-out worker who after a life of ceaseless effort and useful productivity must look forward for his declining years to a poorhouse. A modern social consciousness demands a more humane and efficient arrangement.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Years, Civilization, Effort

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1941). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1937, Volume 6”, p.210, Best Books on

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• What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be averted

  Lin Yutang

  Dream, War, Men

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• For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Father, Agriculture, Civilization

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• Everything in modern civilization is based on this concept of time which is not really valid.

  Jose Arguelles

  Civilization, Modern, Concept Of Time

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• The sole perfection which modern civilization attains is a mechanical one; machines are splendid and flawless, but the life which serves them or is served by them, is neither superb nor brilliant, nor more perfect nor more graceful; nor is the work of the machines perfect; only they, the machines, are like gods.

  Karel Capek

  Civilization, Perfect, Machines

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• The interesting thing is the field is so big - it's enormous. One thing a modern civilization needs is energy.

  Charlie Munger

  Civilization, Interesting, Energy

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• I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our modern civilization. But I believe they should be so regulated that they shall act for the interests of the community as a whole.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Believe, Civilization, Community

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• The legalized liquor business is the tragedy of our civilization. Alcohol is the greatest and most blighting curse of our modern civilization. The liquor seller is simply and only a privileged malefactor - a criminal.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Civilization, Alcohol, Tragedy

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• Once you get past the grand normative claims made in the West for literature, especially the novel, in the post-Christian era - that it is a secular substitute for religion, hallmark of modern civilization, a priori liberal and cosmopolitan, with authors appearing to implicitly embody such pious ideals - you encounter a less agreeable reality: parochialism, blinkered views, even racial prejudices of the kind the bourgeoisie have held everywhere.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Christian, Past, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• We must open our eyes and see that modern civilization has become so complex and the lives of civilized men so interwoven with thelives of other men in other countries as to make it impossible to be in this world and out of it.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Eye, Men

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• [T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.

  E. O. Wilson

  Mean, Civilization, Ideas

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• The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people... The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.

  Pope Pius IX

  Civilization, Ideas, People

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• For several centuries Western civilization has had a drive for material accumulation, continual extensions of economic power, termed 'progress'...The longing for growth is not wrong. The nub of the problem is how to flip over, as in jujitsu, the magnificent growth energy of modern civilization into a nonacquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature.

  Gary Snyder

  Self, Civilization, Growth

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