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Civilization Quotes
"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."
63
"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."
61
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society."
53
"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."
51
"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."
45
"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct."
38
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
28
"The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization."
28
"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor."
21
"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."
17
"America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization."
17
"Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization."
17
"The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian."
17
"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."
15
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
15
"Without adventure civilization is in full decay."
15
"Today, human civilization is drowning in a sea of lies."
15
"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."
15
"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."
15
"I believe with all my heart that civilization has produced nothing finer than a man or woman who thinks and practices true tolerance."
14
"Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down."
14
"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization."
13
"We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse."
13
"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."
13
"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."
13
"Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists."
12
"Civilization in its present form hasn't got long."
12
"The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization."
12
"Civilization and profit go hand in hand."
12
"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."
12
"The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself."
12
"Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others."
11
"The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps."
11
"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."
11
"Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization."
11
"The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind."
11
"If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts."
11
"I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills."
11
"To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization."
11
"The development of civilization was marked by constant changes. This will continue " therefore, the future will belong to people ready for change."
11
"China is a civilization pretending to be a nation."
11
"A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment."
10
"To the present writer a careful study of the facts now available seems to leave no doubt that civilization was born at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean."
10
"Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top."
10
"Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark."
10
"There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a Yeti."
10
"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."
10
"Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades."
10
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