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"Speech is civilization itself."
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"If this is called civilization, then I am afraid humanity is no more civilized than the Tyrannosaurus Rex."

"This grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings....the merry dance of death and trade goes on."

"The first requisite of civilization is that of justice."

"After the monkeys came down from the trees and learned to hurl sharp objects, they had had to move into caves for protection--not only from the big predatory cats but, as they began to lose their monkey fur, from the elements. Eventually, they started transposing their hunting fantasies onto cave walls in the form of pictures, first as an attempt at practical magic and later for the strange, unexpected pleasure they discovered in artistic creation. Time passed. Art came off the walls and turned into ritual. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present mindless, voracious trajectory, could land those of us lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again."

"Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization."

"What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea."

"A civilized society is formed when every individual in that society are bound to obey the rules and regulation which is for the benefit of their own society."

"Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables."

"Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war."

"The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Mann

"An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates."

"I never can understand how anyone can not smoke it deprives a man of the best part of life. With a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him, literally."

"Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness."

"The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity."

"Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."

"What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life."
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