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"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."
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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 Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed."
"Then, as tonight, he had felt lonely, but soon had learnt the bounty of such loneliness. The music had breathed to him its message, to him alone amongst these ordinary folk, whispered its gentle secret. And now the star. Across the shoulders of these people a voice was speaking to him in a tongue that he alone could understand"."
"When you've finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care."
"He is among those beings of great scope who spread their leafy branches willingly over broad horizons. To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to know shame at the sight of poverty which is not of our making. It is to be proud of a victory won by our comrades. It is to feel, as we place our stone, that we are contributing to the building of the world."
"A single radio post still heard him. The only link between him and the world was a wave of music, a minor modulation. Not a lament, no cry, yet purest of sounds that ever spoke despair."
"Love is not about staring at each other, but staring off in the same direction."
"I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them."
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me..."
"Grown-ups love figures. When you talk to them about a new friend, they never ask questions about essential matters."
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