Civilization Quotes - Page 4

There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.

All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.

The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.

Los británicos, al igual que los estadounidenses, recuerdan la Segunda Guerra Mundial como una época en la que su mejor generación salvó al mundo de la maldad del nazismo.

The mythic voice rising from literature and art allows us to be humane. We are not humane because of political power, or education, or even religion. We are humane because we recognize the humanity of others. The writer and the artist appeal to that humanity. For that reason, literature and art are the bones of civilization.

An angry artist tells people what (he thinks) they need to hear. A hungry artist tells people what (he thinks) they want to hear.

Back then: to be regarded as well-known, one had to be great. Today: to be regarded as great, one has to be well-known.

The Message of Mohammad is not a set of metaphysical phenomena. It is a complete civilization.

Not just charity, even corruption begins at home.

A civilization must be judged by its standards not by its expenditure.

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.

The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived.

I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, one's mental state, the ecology, and so on.

The earth is an orbiting speck in incomprehensible vastness. The histories of our civilizations, our accomplishments and secrets, great good and evil - these are no more significant than the single twinkle of a star. Perhaps, this is why we try to outshine the heavens with our cities and make theatrical events of our simple lives.

America's civilization perturbs the trajectories of all other civilizations just by existing.

There is always a city. There is always a civilization. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilization, but to become that city, that civilization, you once took a pickaxe and destroyed what you hated, and what you hated is what you did not understand.

Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether.

Throughout human history, countries rise and fall. But not America-we continue to rise and rise, like dough, until Jesus bakes us in the fiery Afterscape of the Rapture.