Civilization Quotes - Page 10

• Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally. Nationalities should form the constitutive links in a great world alliance, and must be guaranteed an independent life in the realm of the spiritual and for locally delimited tasks, while economic and political objectives must be guided internationally in a spirit of peaceful cooperation for the promotion of mankind's common interests.

  Christian Lous Lange

  Spiritual, Independent, Political

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• America is the civilization of people engaged in transforming themselves. In the past, the stars of the performance were the pioneer and the immigrant. Today, it is youth and the Black.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Change, Stars, Past

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• Our expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let's put aside fears of the disuniting of America and warnings of the clash of civilizations. As Langston Hughes sang, Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.

  Ronald Takaki

  Time, Memories, Equality

  "What does it mean to be Asian American? / The passing of Cal Prof. Ronald Takaki, who helped define the term, leads Jeff Yang to reflect on its relevance in the Age of Obama" by Jeff Yang, www.sfgate.com. June 4, 2009.

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• In his scientific genius, man has wrought material miracles and has transformed his world. He has harnassed nature and has developed great civilizations. But he has never learned very well how to live with himself. The values he has created have been predominantly materialistic; his spiritual values have lagged far behind. He has demonstrated little spiritual genius and has made little progress toward the realization of human brotherhood. In the contemporary atomic age, this could prove man's fatal weakness.

  Ralph Bunche

  God, Spiritual, Men

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• Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Moving, Writing, Fighting

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• ...if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us.

  Robert Kennedy

  Children, Opportunity, Air

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• It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.

  Ronald Knox

  Stupid, Believe, Evil

  Let Dons Delight ch. 8 (1939)

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• A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Adventure, Past

  Alfred North Whitehead (1975). “Whitehead's American Essays in Social Philosophy”, Greenwood Publishing Group

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• Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  War, Opposites, Degrees

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.77, Penguin

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• Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.

  Jacques Ellul

  Technology, Order, Society

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• We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge

  George Will

  Knowledge, Science, Want

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• But once we recognize that many ideas that are taken to be quintessentially Western have also flourished in other civilizations, we also see that these ideas are not as culture-specific as is sometimes claimed. We need not begin with pessimism, at least on this ground, about the prospects of reasoned humanism in the world.

  Amartya Sen

  Taken, Ideas, Diversity

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• Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark.

  Theodore Parker

  Dark, Cities, Light

  Theodore Parker “The Works of Theodore Parker: Lessons from the world of matter and the world of man”

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• From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.

  Friedrich Engels

  Philosophical, Greed, Firsts

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of Karl Marx (Illustrated)”, p.1120, Delphi Classics

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• Our civilization depends largely on paper.

  Pliny the Elder

  Paper, Depends

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• Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.

  Frank Herbert

  Quality, Individual, Produce

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Children of Dune”, p.312, Penguin

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• Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

  Octavia Butler

  People, Way, Foreigners

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Seed to Harvest: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and Patternmaster”, p.134, Open Road Media

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• The great question is, can war be outlawed from the world? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount.

  Douglas MacArthur

  War, World, Mark

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• War is a damnable, filthy thing and has destroyed civilization after civilization

  Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker

  War, Filthy, Destroyed

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• Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of self-interest and a denial of the public good. The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't

  John Ralston Saul

  Self, Democracy, Citizens

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.186, Simon and Schuster

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• Fairness is an efficiency parameter if we look at the whole global civilization. It is not an efficient way of meeting human needs if one billion people starve while another billion have excess. It would be more efficient to distribute resources so that at least vital needs were met everywhere. Otherwise, for example, if kids are starving somewhere, dad goes out to slash and burn the rain forest to feed them - and so would I if my kids were dying. And this kind of destruction is everyone's problem, because we live in the same ecosphere.

  Karl-Henrik Robert

  Inspiring, Dad, Rain

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• There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Religion, Liberty

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• I think governments are the cancer of civilization.

  Chuck D

  Cancer, Thinking, Government

  "Rapping the Vote With Chuck D". Interview with Jeff Chang, www.motherjones.com. September/October 2004.

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• Civilization sails prettily like a child's rubber balloon until it hits a sharp object; then it is likely to collapse like the balloon.

  Austin O'Malley

  Children, Balloons, Rubber

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• Civilization is the world with its leg asleep.

  Austin O'Malley

  World, Legs

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