Civilization Quotes
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The Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations have perished; Hammurabi, Sargon and Nebuchadnezzar are empty names; yet Babylonian mathematics is still interesting, and the Babylonian scale of 60 is still used in Astronomy.
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Further strengthenings of the self-centered instinct for survival recruit even greater numbers of people into some sort of ring of fellowship (church or gender, red state or blue) by populating the terra incognita outside the ring with enough barbarians to verify the existence of a civilization within--to define the preferred stock by what, as all good people agree, it decidedly is not.
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Civilization may progress, human nature will remain the same throughout all ages.
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The civilization of a state should be measured by the amount of suffering it prevents and the degree of happiness it makes possible for its citizens.
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The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.
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Printing up extra money - with no backing - used to be the sort of thing only counterfeiters did. Now it is done by the central bankers and Treasury Secretaries themselves. They don't apologize for it. They don't hang their heads and contemplate blowing their brains out. Instead, they're proud of it... announcing that they 'saved civilization,' or some such claptrap.
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In a civilization like ours, I feel that everyone has to come to terms with the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life, or else be guilty of inattention or of evading the question.
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What basic psychological distortion can be found in every civilization of which we know anything? The only psychological force capable of producing these perversions is morality - the concept of right and wrong. The re-interpretation and eventual eradication of the concept of right and wrong are the belated objectives of nearly all of psychotherapy.
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Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe.
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Who are we to say what's right for civilizations that were already thousands of years old when our own nation came into being?
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A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity.
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Civilization does everything for the mind and favors it entirely at the expense of the body.
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If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
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Co-operation, like other difficult things, can be learned only by practice: and to be capable of it in great things, a people must be gradually trained to it in small. Now the whole course of advancing civilization is a series of such training.
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We all live under the constant threat of our own annihilation. Only by the most outrageous violation of ourselves have we achieved our capacity to live in relative adjustment to a civilization apparently driven to its own destruction.
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It seems to me we are now, since 1789, going through the same sort of process of regeneration the Roman world went through between 300 and 500. It is only to be hoped all civilization will not again be destroyed by the anarchists.
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Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages.
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My parents did not care whether I saw an opera or understood a statue; all that could be considered in time, in the future, for operas and statues belonged to urban culture, and my kinfolks said any person with any kind of background could acquire a city civilization, but that few city people could ever learn the culture of a rural country.
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The enthronement of Christ over the minds of men is steadily going forward. His kingdom embraces the princes in the realm of mind. It embraces the nations of highest civilization. They are all beneath the cross. It is maintained by simple authority. Other mental monarchs rule by logic; Christ's word is law--it is satisfying to His subjects. His truth in the hands of His disciples, like the bread He broke upon the mountains, is an ample supply for the millions that gather at His table.
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There are certain things for which civilization has no answer. But if you choose to meddle thus, then you must be prepared to facethe consequences, whatever they are.
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It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
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All creatures tread across the rubble of ruined civilizations. The trick is to keep moving. No animal ever goes about dispensing shallow compassion.
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The most enduring contributions made to civilization have not been made by brawn, they have been made by brain.
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When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.
