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"This freedom of political discussion on the highest level is something which Western civilization has in common with that of classical antiquity, but with no other."
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"Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables."

"It ain't technology that enhances the civilization..but the way mankind perceives nature from all standpoints."

"Old people have wisdom but not energy; young people have energy but not wisdom; energy and wisdom must be in the same body to create a much better civilisation! To do this, we will either give energy to the old or we will give wisdom to the young and for now the latter seems a more plausible action!"

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

"Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down."

"We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others."

"Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization."

"Education is not the amount of information that is pushed into the brain and causes havoc there, undigested all through a lifetime. Education must be a symposium of life-building, character- making and assimilation of ideas in the pursuit of building a more harmonious, peaceful and truly civilized world."

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

"In the world of primitive savages, religion and bigotry go hand in hand. But, in the world of civilized humans, religion and reason must go hand in hand."
Explore more quotes by Christopher Dawson

"As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism."

"The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism."

"It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions."

"But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them."

"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."

"American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World."

"If man limits himself to a satisfied animal existence, and asks from life only what such an existence can give, the higher values of life at once disappear."

"Every great movement in the history of Western civilization from the Carolingian age to the nineteenth century has been an international movement which owed its existence and its development to the cooperation of many different peoples."

"Man can know his world without falling back on revelation; he can live his life without feeling his utter dependence on supernatural powers."

"It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them to her own ends."
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