Quotes about civilization
civilization availability people
Side by side with the miseries of underdevelopment...we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissable. This superdevelopment consists in an excessive availability of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups and makes people slaves of "possession" and immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better. This is the civilization of consumption, or "consumerism," which involves so much throwing away and waste. Pope John Paul II
civilization people atheism
Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium suggests something soporific, numbing, dulling. Too often religion has been an aphrodisiac for horror, a Benzedrine for bestiality. At its best it has lifted spirits and raised spires. At its worst it has turned entire civilizations into cemeteries. Phillip Adams
civilization skeletons stories
Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last — the power to refuse our consent. Primo Levi
civilization paper depends
Our civilization depends largely on paper. Pliny the Elder
civilization revolution
Revolution is the larva of civilization. Victor Hugo
civilization imagination quality
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
civilization use barbarians
Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians, who find it less trouble to provide a new, cheap, and shoddy thing than to get the full use and full pleasure out of a finely-made and carefully-chosen old one. Vernon Lee
civilization challenges world
We live in a world of crisis, of challenge, and ... it's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations that we're seeing the current manifestations of. Thomas P. Campbell
civilization two way
Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state. Thomas Paine
civilization silence speech
Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictions word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates. Thomas E. Mann
civilization judgmental assignments
Our assignment was to topple this prudish, judgmental civilization. And it worked. Timothy Leary
civilization society unbearable
Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.
civilization enormous devices
Civilization is an enormous device for economizing knowledge,. Thomas Sowell
civilization light society
The demands of unbounded individualism need to be weighed in the light of inherent social constraints which can only change their form but cannot be eliminated without eliminating civilization.
civilization vision arbitrary
If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback.
civilization play santa
Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected.
civilization people pay
Some people say that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. But the runaway taxes of our time are the price we pay for being gullible.
civilization generations too-late
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
civilization people religion
Organized religion has too often followed the road of other people's institutions. It has made adjustments, compromises, and surrenders to a materialistic civilization for the benefit of material security in spite of occasional twinges of conscience and moral protests. The result has been that today much of organized religion is materialistically solvent but spiritually bankrupt. Saul Alinsky
civilization people empathy
The purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize with other people... For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. Roger Ebert
civilization issues important
A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death Robert M. Hutchins
civilization intellectual tape
Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used. Richard Rorty
civilization atheism done
... All questions concerning the rise of Christianity are one: How was it done? How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilization? Although this is the only question, it requires many answers - no one thing led to the triumph of Christianity. Rodney Stark
civilization sickness illness
civilization is a transient sickness. Robinson Jeffers
civilization liberty progress
Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization. Robert Green Ingersoll
civilization history tests
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. Samuel Johnson
civilization decline fragmentation
Fragmentation occurs when a civilization is in decline. Robert Payne
civilization saint crumbs
Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints. Wallace Stevens
civilization giving support
Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization? William Henry Harrison
civilization firsts culture
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards Walter Bagehot
civilization barbarism documents
There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism. Walter Benjamin
civilization magazines adequate
We do not see the danger clearly enough that we develop images adequate to our state of civilization. When you watch TV, you know instantly that there's something wrong with the images. When you open a magazine and see the ads, you know there's something wrong with the images. And it's unhealthy and not good and outright dangerous, in my opinion. Werner Herzog
civilization dinosaurs adequate
We live in a society that has no adequate images anymore, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.