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"It is just because civilization is ever evolving, changing, and becoming more complicated, that experts find it so difficult to define it in explicit terms."
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"If this is called civilization, then I am afraid humanity is no more civilized than the Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others."
"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."
"A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance."
"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."
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
Explore more quotes by Arthur Keith
"Good men, whether they be Christians or rationalists, do not desire to discriminate between races, but the distinctions implanted by Nature are too conspicuous to escape the observation of our senses."
"There are the further difficulties of building a population out of a diversity of races, each at a different stage of cultural evolution, some in need of restraint, many in need of protection; everywhere a bewildering Babel of tongues."
"Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool."
"Civilization never stands still; if in one country it is falling back, in another it is changing, evolving, becoming more complicated, bringing fresh experience to body and mind, breeding new desires, and exploiting Nature's cupboard for their satisfaction."
"Universalism as an ideal is as old as nay, is probably much more ancient than the Christian ideal."
"I prize the conditions under which I have lived because they have permitted me to choose my opportunities, to inquire into such matters as interested me, and to publish what I believed to be true, uncontrolled by any central authority."
"There are very few men and women in whom a Universalist feeling is altogether lacking; its prevalence suggests that it must be part of our inborn nature and have a place in Nature's scheme of evolution."
"Tolerance is held to be a condition of mind which is encouraged by, and is necessary for, civilization."
"Tribal life comes automatically to an end when a primitive people begins to live in a town or a city, for sooner or later a tribal organization is found to be incompatible with life in a city."
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