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"From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment."
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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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization."
"Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights."
"Civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex."
Explore more quotes by Ellsworth Huntington
"Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers."
"The geysers and hot springs of the Yellowstone are another proof of recent volcanic activity."
"Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential."
"The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate that, in spite of man's boasted ability to live anywhere, the strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active types of mind."
"Geologists are rapidly becoming convinced that the mammals spread from their central Asian point of origin largely because of great variations in climate."
"In America the most widespread type of forest is the evergreen coniferous woodland of the north."
"The evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward."
"The Indians could not undertake any widespread cultivation of the plains not only because they lacked iron tools but also because they had no draft animals."
"Except on their southern borders the great northern forests are not good as a permanent home for man."
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