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"I realize then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current European civilization and do not understand its goals, if it has any. So I am really writing for friends who are scattered throughout the corners of the globe."
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"Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell."

"I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt."

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

"The majority of India's adult and elderly population is too medieval to think as civilized, rational and progressive human beings."

"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."

"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."

"There is nothing more savage than modern civilization."

"Advanced weaponry, victories in battle and space travel do not an advanced species or civilization make."

"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."

"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!"
Explore more quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."

"There is a truth in Schopenhauer's view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say 'Let's get a rough idea', for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads."

"Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical."

"Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it."

"The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long."

"If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God."
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