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"Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there."
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Exlpore more Civilization quotes
"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 Goldwin Smith
"It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city."
"If it were a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual prevarication."
"Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches."
"Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God."
"The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party."
"No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest."
"There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still."
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