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Civilization Quotes
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society."
96
"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."
90
"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."
86
"Justice has nothing to do with victor nations and vanquished nations, but must be a moral standard that all the world's peoples can agree to. To seek this and to achieve it - that is true civilization."
60
"I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization."
58
"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct."
55
"Not a single piece of material culture - not a single object - has been found at Giza that can be interpreted to come from a lost civilization."
51
"Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization."
42
"A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence."
34
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
33
"The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization."
32
"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor."
30
"I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing."
27
"We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting."
26
"To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization."
26
"America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization."
24
"Without adventure civilization is in full decay."
23
"Today, human civilization is drowning in a sea of lies."
23
"Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top."
22
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
22
"The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian."
22
"China is a civilization pretending to be a nation."
22
"The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization."
21
"The center of Western culture is Greece, and we have never lost our ties with the architectural concepts of that ancient civilization."
21
"The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself."
21
"Civilization in its present form hasn't got long."
20
"We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse."
20
"The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation."
20
"Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male."
20
"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization."
19
"You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn."
19
"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos."
19
"I would seriously question whether anybody is really foolish enough to really say what they mean. Sometimes I think that civilization as we know it would kind of break down if we all were completely honest."
18
"Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down."
18
"There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a Yeti."
18
"The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization."
18
"Hold fast to the Bible. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization and to this we must look as our guide in the future."
18
"Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-- they cannot work and their civilization collapses."
18
"Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent."
18
"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization."
17
"I believe with all my heart that civilization has produced nothing finer than a man or woman who thinks and practices true tolerance."
17
"From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment."
17
"Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark."
17
"Civilization, we shall find, like Universalism and Christianity, is anti evolutionary in its effects; it works against the laws and conditions which regulated the earlier stages of man's ascent."
17
"You know, our sense of individuality is just the number one target of civilization."
17
"If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts."
17
"I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills."
17
"A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind."
17
"Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists."
16
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