Civilization Quotes - Page 27

• There is nothing more fragile than civilization.

  Havelock Ellis

  Fragile

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• To travel is to discover that everybody is wrong. The philosophies, the civilizations which seem, at a distance, so superior to those current at home, all prove on a close inspection to be in their own way just as hopelessly imperfect.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Distance, Home

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1926-1929”, Ivan R Dee

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• Civilization means food and literature all round. Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all. First-class proteins for the body, fourth-class love-stories for the spirit.

  Aldous Huxley

  Mean, Class, Romance

  Aldous Huxley (1955). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• In a living society every day is a day of judgment; and its recognition as such is not the end of all things but the beginning ofa real civilization.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Real, Recognition, Judgment

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.3772, e-artnow

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• Civilisation is hooped together, brought
  Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
  By manifold illusion.

  William Butler Yeats

  Together, Uprooting, Illusion

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose”, p.215, Simon and Schuster

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• The nature of men and of organized society dictates the maintenance in every field of action of the highest and purest standards of justice and of right dealing.... By justice the lawyer generally means the prompt, fair, and open application of impartial rules; but we call ours a Christian civilization, and a Christian conception of justice must be much higher. It must include sympathy and helpfulness and a willingness to forego self-interest in order to promote the welfare, happiness, and contentment of others and of the community as a whole.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Christian, Mean, Men

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• It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Heart, Fighting

  Address to Joint Session of Congress asking for declaration of war, 2 Apr. 1917

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• It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Learning, Men, Perfect

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• All of us confront limits of body, talent, temperament. But that is not all. We are, all of us, also constrained by our time, our place, our civilization.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Body, Limits, Talent

  Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (1983). “The Reagan phenomenon, and other speeches on foreign policy”, Aei Pr

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• The city is all right. To live in one
  Is to be civilized, stay up and read
  Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise
  By waiting up instead of getting up.

  Robert Frost

  Night, Cities, Waiting

  Robert Frost (1975). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share ofthe Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Past, People, Holocaust

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• The physician...is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Flower, Physicians

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• Every mob, in its ignorance and blindness and bewilderment, is a League of Frightened Men that seeks reassurance in collective action.

  Max Lerner

  Ignorance, Men, League

  Max Lerner (1959). “The Unfinished Country”

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• ... the next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard?

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  War, Army, Opportunity

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• The further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does "fame" become, especially of the literary sort. This species of "fame" a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured.

  Herman Melville

  Order, Literature, Lines

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.492, Northwestern University Press

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• Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains; and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.

  Herman Melville

  Brother, Freedom, Wings

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (1970). “Mardi and a Voyage Thither: Volulme Three, Scholarly Edition”, p.527, Northwestern University Press

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• When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?--Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us--Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians--sprung from one head and made in one image.

  Herman Melville

  Thug, Rome, Years

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• The result of civilization, at the Sandwich Islands and elsewhere, is found productive to the civilizers, destructive to the civilizees. It is said to be compensation--a very philosophical word; but it appears to be very much on the principle of the old game, "You lose, I win": good philosophy for the winner.

  Herman Melville

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Winning

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• When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the "big canoe" of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.

  Herman Melville

  Beach, Betrayal, Hate

  Herman Melville (2017). “The Complete Works of Herman Melville: Adventure Classics, Sea Tales, Philosophical Works, Short Stories, Poetry & Essays: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, John Marr and Other Sailors…”, p.28, e-artnow

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• Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.

  Herman Melville

  Europe, People, Community

  Herman Melville (2012). “Typee: A Romance of the South Seas (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.211, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.

  Herman Melville

  Race, Unhappy, Earth

  Herman Melville (1982). “Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi”, p.230, Library of America

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• The Jews always complained, kvetching about false gods, and erected the
  biggest false God, Jehovah, in middle of western civilization.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Jehovah, Middle, Jew

  Allen Ginsberg (1986). “White shroud: poems, 1980-1985”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Mean, Adventure, Ideas

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.

  Jack Kerouac

  Children, Men, Sticks

  Jack Kerouac (2000). “Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings”, p.88, Penguin

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• The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm's length.

  John Dos Passos

  America, People, Arms

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