Civilisation Quotes - Page 4

• I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection. - Hind Swaraj

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Self, Bravery, India

  Mahatma Gandhi (2010). “Hind Swaraj”, p.11, Rajpal & Sons

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• I know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish...well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point.

  Louis de Bernieres

  Easter, Party, Thinking

  Louis de Bernieres (2012). “Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel”, p.412, Vintage

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• To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilisation so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bend her head as if to let her pelt f jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dirty, Thinking, People

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• [N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Real, Book, Mind

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• Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Fear, Race, People

  Kazuo Ishiguro (2001). “When We Were Orphans”, p.95, Vintage

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• Now let's take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!

  Ray Bradbury

  Dog, Book, Cat

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• The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness which characterize the thoughts and convictions of men today, and reaching a state of fresh hope and fresh determination.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Inspiring, Future, Men

  "The decay and the restoration of civilization".

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• My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilisation. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Race, Views, Two

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.214, Psychology Press

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• For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Travel, Moving, Memorable

  Travels with a Donkey "Cheylard and Luc" (1879)

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• Golf is an indispensable adjunct to high civilisation.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Golf, Indispensable

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• Roving dogs do not indicate the civilisation or compassion of the society. They betray on the country the ignorance and lethargy of its members.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Country, Dog, Ignorance

  Mahatma Gandhi (1927). “Young India, 1924-1926”

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• Modern mass culture, aimed at the "consumer", the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.

  Andrei Tarkovsky

  Spiritual, Men, Mass Culture

  "Sculpting in Time" by Andrei Tarkovsky, (p. 42), 1986.

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• No civilisation can grow unless fanatics, bloodshed, and brutality stop. No civilisation can begin to lift up its head until we look charitably upon one another; and the first step towards that much-needed charity is to look charitably and kindly upon the religious convictions of others. Nay more, to understand that not only should we be charitable, but positively helpful to each other, however different our religious ideas and convictions may be.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Religious, Ideas, Different

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1111, Manonmani Publishers

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• You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Christian, Peace, Biblical

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• But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.

  Arthur Balfour

  Change, Religious, Knowledge

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• An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.

  Iain Banks

  Encounters, Way, Problem

  "What are the great sentences in genre fiction?" Claire Armitstead, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2014.

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• 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.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Discovery, Progress, Comfort

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• What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilisation is a few hundred years old ... an advanced civilisation millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque

  Carl Sagan

  Mean, Technology, Years

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.337, Ballantine Books

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• It used to be said that you had to know what was happening in America because it gave us a glimpse of our future. Today, the rest of America, and after that Europe, had better heed what happens in California, for it already reveals the type of civilisation that is in store for all of us.

  Alistair Cooke

  Europe, California, America

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• Passion, intellect, moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.

  Florence Nightingale

  Passion, Atmosphere, Would Be

  Florence Nightingale (2017). “Cassandra and Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale”, p.184, Routledge

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• You cannot have both truth and what you call civilisation.

  Iris Murdoch

  Truth

  Iris Murdoch (1976). “A Severed Head”, p.52, Penguin

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• All history shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last they entirely cease.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Miracle, Atheism, Lasts

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1865). “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe”, p.158

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• one feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable?

  Dervla Murphy

  What Matters, Race, Sick

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• People with really weak characters cause an immense amount of suffering in the world. They destroy whole civilisations.

  Bessie Head

  Character, People, Suffering

  Bessie Head, Randolph Vigne (1991). “A gesture of belonging: letters from Bessie Head, 1965-1979”, Heinemann

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• This is by far the most serious crisis civilisation has ever faced.

  Al Gore

  Serious, Climate Change, Crisis

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