A civilization is a society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.
A
- Civilization is at the cross-roads. The issues are now so obvious that no argument is necessary. Forces of tyranny are arrayed against those who are minded for liberty and peace. Humanity is dividing into two camps. Men are spending most of their substance on material for mutual slaughter. In such a way are the first two thousand years of the Christian era drawing to a close. The world presents a panorama in which progress and barbarism, organization and chaos, brilliance and stupidity seem inextricably mixed. What has gone wrong? Is there true cause for hope or for despair? Is it possible to read the riddle of human evolution, to discover the clue to future progress, and to find the means by which humanity can be set free from the present apparent deadlock? For civilization has reached an impasse involving other things than war, an impasse involving economics, health, morality, and self-knowledge. Is there any way of piercing the fog of surface happenings, and of understanding the true trend and significance of events? Introduction
- Man acts because he believes that his actions will bring forth certain results. The bird builds its nest because it anticipates in its own way certain family developments. All life looks to the future. It is only in ratio with our ability to estimate the future that our life will not be lived in vain. All the greatest creative works have been achieved well ahead of their time. Primitive man plans for the next few hours. Average man plans for the next few years. Superman plans for the coming centuries. The urgent need, therefore, is to learn to see what is ahead of us, if that is possible. I believe that it is possible, and that, without the aid of astrology, prophetic dreams or psychic visions, but purely through a logical thought process, we can tune in the mind to that part of its own world where the plan of the universe and the process of evolution is mapped out. It is, I am convinced, a process as practical, as scientific, and as sure as that of using a wireless set. p 18
- Incorrigible humanity, therefore, led astray by the giant Nimrod, presumed in its heart to outdo in skill not only nature but the source of its own nature, who is God; and began to build a tower in Sennaar, which afterwards was called Babel (that is, 'confusion'). By this means human beings hoped to climb up to heaven, intending in their foolishness not to equal but to excel their creator.
- Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, Chapter VII
- Only among those who were engaged in a particular activity did their language remain unchanged; so, for instance, there was one for all the architects, one for all the carriers of stones, one for all the stone-breakers, and so on for all the different operations. As many as were the types of work involved in the enterprise, so many were the languages by which the human race was fragmented; and the more skill required for the type of work, the more rudimentary and barbaric the language they now spoke. But the holy tongue remained to those who had neither joined in the project nor praised it, but instead, thoroughly disdaining it, had made fun of the builders' stupidity.
- Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, Chapter VII
- They have things like the atom bomb! So, I'll think I'll stay where I am. Civilization? I'll stay right here!
- The Andrews Sisters and Danny Kaye, "Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)" (1947), Decca
B
- The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war.
- Charles Babbage. The Exposition of 1851, p. xii-xiii
- It is essential that all thinking people should give time and thought to the consideration of the major world problems with which we are now faced. Some of them can be solved with relative rapidity—given common sense and a correctly appreciated self-interest; others will require foresighted planning and a long patience as, one by one, the necessary steps are taken, leading to the readjustment of human values and the inauguration of new attitudes of mind regarding right human relations. In the recognition of the growth in human consciousness and in a realization of the distinction obviously existing between primitive men and our modern intelligent humanity lie the grounds for an unshaken optimism as to human destiny. Events in the immediate foreground do not blot out the long history of human development and obliterate recognition of the long range changes which have taken place within the human consciousness
- Alice Bailey, The Problems Of Humanity (1944)
- It must be recognized that the cause of all world unrest, of the world wars which have wrecked humanity, and the widespread misery upon our planet, can largely be attributed to a selfish group with materialistic purposes, who have for centuries exploited the masses and used the labour of mankind for their selfish ends... This group of capitalists has cornered and exploited the world's resources and the staples required for civilised living; they have been able to do this because they have owned and controlled the world's wealth through their interlocking directorates, and have retained it in their hands. They have made possible the vast differences existing between the very rich and the very poor; they love money and the power which money gives; they have stood behind governments and politicians; they have controlled the electorate; they have made possible the narrow nationalistic aims of selfish politics; they have financed the world businesses and controlled oil, coal, power, light and transportation; they control publicly or sub rosa the world's banking accounts.
The responsibility for the widespread misery to be found today in every country in the world, lies predominantly at the door of certain major interrelated groups of businessmen, bankers, executives of international cartels, monopolies, trusts and organisations, and directors of huge corporations, who work for corporate or personal gain. p. 70/1- Alice Bailey, The Problems Of Humanity (1944)
- The bureaucratic culture which prompts us to view society as an object of administration, as a collection of so many 'problems' to be solved, as 'nature' to be 'controlled', 'mastered' and 'improved' or 'remade', as a legitimate target for 'social engineering', and in general a garden to be designed and kept in the planned shape by force (the gardening posture divides vegetation into 'cultured plants' to be taken care of, and weeds to be exterminated), was the very atmosphere in which the idea of the Holocaust could be conceived, slowly yet consistently developed, and brought to its conclusion.
- Zygmunt Bauman, "Modernity and the Holocaust" (1989), in Against Civilization (1999), p. 133
- There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
- Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), VII
- Civilization depends upon the control of our instincts--aggression foremost among them.
- Claire Berlinski, Twitter post (1 October 2018)
- The dramatic growth of human civilization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would not have been possible without the discovery and exploitation of stored sunlight power and the ancient dead remains of organisms in coal and oil deposits, which, as numerous theorists have argued, already reached peak levels decades ago, or are soon reaching them, and will rapidly decline by 2050. The exploitation of coal deposits to power the rapid growth of industrial capitalism was an unrepeatable one-and-done shot, and precipitated the current climate crisis.
- Steven Best, "Failed Species: The Rise and Fall of the Human Empire". Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity. 9 (2). (2021).
- There is a flaw in civilization from the instant it has to admit fear.
- Elizabeth Bowen, A Time in Rome (London: Longmans, 1960), p. 23
- You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.
- John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night", The Power-House (1916)
- Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.
- Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds, p. 337 (1954)
- There’s a certain step-by-step logic, inherent in human nature and the peculiarities of human psychology, which ensures that Man will always organize into the largest possible group. Civilization is inevitable, if you want a pat phrase.
- Algis Budrys, Some Will Not Die (1961), Chapter 5
- But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness—each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked—each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.
- Herbert Butterfield, Christianity, Diplomacy and War (1953), p. 43.
C
- Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
- G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
- People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater.
- Kenneth Clark, Ch. 1: The Skin of Our Teeth, Civilisation (1969)
- The convention by which the great events in biblical or secular history could be enacted only by magnificent physical specimens, handsome and well-groomed, went on for a long time — till the middle of the nineteenth century. Only a very few artists — perhaps only Rembrandt and Caravaggio in the first rank — were independent enough to stand against it. And I think that this convention, which was an element in the so-called grand manner, became a deadening influence on the European mind. It deadened our sense of truth, even our sense of moral responsibility.
- Kenneth Clark, Ch. 5: The Hero as Artist, Civilisation (1969)
- We are so much accustomed to the humanitarian outlook that we forget how little it counted in earlier ages of civilisation. Ask any decent person in England or America what he thinks matters most in human conduct: five to one his answer will be "kindness." It's not a word that would have crossed the lips of any of the earlier heroes of this series. If you had asked St. Francis what mattered in life, he would, we know, have answered "chastity, obedience and poverty"; if you had asked Dante or Michelangelo, they might have answered "disdain of baseness and injustice"; if you had asked Goethe, he would have said "to live in the whole and the beautiful." But kindness, never. Our ancestors didn't use the word, and they did not greatly value the quality — except perhaps insofar as they valued compassion.
- Kenneth Clark, Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism, Civilisation (1969)
- It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
- Kenneth Clark, Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism, Civilisation (1969)
- Since the idea of order and subordination succumbed to barbarian brawn and brutality in the fifth century, the civilized world has been like a child brought up by his father. It has needed the great mother heart to teach it to be pitiful, to love mercy, to succor the weak and ca, re for the lowly.
- Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 51
D
- We civilized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick .... There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands... Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man itself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
- Charles Darwin, p. 501, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: MacMillan (1871)
- Whatever the virtues of a civilization may be, it immediately belies them if it buys them by means of injustice and tyranny.
- Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity. Philosophical Library. 1948. ISBN 978-0-8065-0160-4. Part III: The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity
- The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead (1862)
- A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
- Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, Epilogue, p. 665 (1944)
- Culture suggests agriculture, but civilization suggests the city. In one aspect civilization is the habit of civility; and civility is the refinement which townsmen, who made the word, thought possible only in the civitas or city.
- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Chap. 1, p. 2
- Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.
- Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (1968)
E
- All of our exalted technological progress, civilization for that matter, is comparable to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.
- Albert Einstein, Letter to Heinrich Zangger (Dec 1917), Collected Papers Vol. 8, 412, as cited in Jürgen Neffe, Einstein: A Biography (2007), 256.
G
- The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it. ... The church and civilization are antipodal; one means authority, the other freedom; one means conservatism, the other progress; one means the rights of God as interpreted by the priesthood, the other the rights of humanity as interpreted by humanity. Civilization advances by free thought, free speech, free men.
- Matilda Joslyn Gage, ‘Church, Woman and State’, New York, 1893. reprinted by Voice of India, New Delhi, 1997 p. 539-540
- One of the effects of civilisation is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.
- Francis Galton, Hereditary talent and character, MacMillan's Magazine, 12, 157-166; 318-327 (1865)
- There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.
- Francis Galton, (p.414), Hereditary Genius, London: MacMillan (1869)
- From the beginning, human civilization has been characterized by acute contradictions. All human advancements derive from the original sin of civilization, namely expropriation and exploitation. Without an exploited people toiling on expropriated land, there is no surplus to allow for material, intellectual, and technological progress. Thus far, civilization has proceeded on the basis of numerous social hierarchies legitimized by various myths. These legitimizing myths facilitate denial of various forms of expropriation and exploitation. In America, these have included "whiteness" vis-a-vis Indians and black slaves, manifest destiny, scientific racism, social Darwinism, anti-Communism, counter-terrorism, American exceptionalism, and "humanitarian" interventionism.
- Aaron Good, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. Skyhorse Publishing. (2022) p. 275. ISBN 978-1510769137
- Civilization is another word for respect for life.
- Elizabeth Goudge in At the Sign of the Dolphin: An Elizabeth Goudge Anthology, compiled and arranged by Rose Dobbs, London: Hodder and Stoughton (1947), p. 507; from Goudge's novel Green Dolphin Country (1944), Book II, Part I, Chapter 3.3, where a character says,"Civilization […] is another word for respect for life", adding that it's "brittle as spun glass".
- The noun civilization is only to be met with in the economists of the years which immediately preceded the French Revolution. [...] Littré, who had ransacked all French literature, could not trace it any further back. Thus the word civilization has no more than a century and a half of existence. It was only in 1835, less than a hundred years ago, that it finally found its way into the dictionary of the Academy. ... The ancients, from whom we still consciously trace our descent, were equally without a term for what we mean by civilization. If this word were given to be translated in Latin prose, the schoolboy would indeed find himself in difficulties.
- René Guénon, quoting (in full agreement) a 1922 publication by Jacques Bainville, in East and West (Sophia Perennis, 2001; originally published in 1924 in French as Orient et Occident), p. 14
- These two ideas, then, of ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’, which are very closely connected, both date only from the second half of the eighteenth century, that is to say from the epoch which saw, among other things, the birth of materialism; and they were propagated and popularized especially by the socialist dreamers of the beginning of the nineteenth century.
- René Guénon, East and West (Sophia Perennis, 2001; originally published in 1924 in French as Orient et Occident), p. 15
H
- Can humans exist without some people ruling and others being ruled? The founders of political science did not think so. "I put for a general inclination of mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death," declared Thomas Hobbes. Because of this innate lust for power, Hobbes thought that life before (or after) the state was a "war of every man against every man"—"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Was Hobbes right? Do humans have an unquenchable desire for power that, in the absence of a strong ruler, inevitably leads to a war of all against all? To judge from surviving examples of bands and villages, for the greater part of prehistory our kind got along quite well without so much as a paramount chief, let alone the all-powerful English leviathan King and Mortal God, whom Hobbes believed was needed for maintaining law and order among his fractious countrymen.
- Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going (1989)
- Civilization no longer represents the conscience of the individuals who must find therein their work. The facts and forces which now organize industry and so-called justice, violate the best instincts of mankind. ... Without regard to his conscience, the economic system involves a man in the guilt of the moral and physical death of his brothers: their blood cries to him from the adulterated and monopolized foods he eats; from the sweat-shop clothes he wears; from his educational advantages, his special privileges, his social opportunities. ... Civilization denies to man that highest of all rights — the right to live a guiltless life, the right to do right.
- George D. Herron, Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), p. 20
- A civilization in denial is easily conquered. Your habit of ignoring parts of reality will allow us to invade without being noticed.
- Ernest Hogan, Skin Dragons Talk (1998), reprinted in Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (2013), ISBN 978-0-9891411-4-7, p. 37
- Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.
- Robert E. Howard in a letter to Harold Preece (c. January or February 1928)
- I believe, like you, that civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence, whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.
- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (c. August 1930)
- Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
- Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant" (1933)
- Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.
- Robert E. Howard, "Beyond the Black River" (1935)
- The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.
- Elbert (Green) Hubbard, Aphorism in The Philistine (Apr 1905), 20, No. 5, 160.
J
- If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (6 January 1816) ME 14:384.; as cited in Hans Kohn. (1961) The Idea Of Nationalism: A Study In Its Origins And Background. p. 313
- Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
- Derrick Jensen, Endgame. p. ix
K
- Russian Ambassador: Civilization is an illusion; a game of pretend. What is real is the fact that we are still animals driven by primal instincts. Civilization crumbles whenever we need it most. In the right situation, we are all capable of the most terrible crimes. Imagine a world where this was no so; imagine a world where every crisis did not result in new atrocities, where every newspaper is not full of war and violence. This is to imagine a world where human beings cease to be human.
- Dave Kajganich (screenplay), The Invasion (2007)
- Type I: "Technological level close to the level presently attained on earth, with energy consumption at ≈4×1019 erg/sec (4 × 1012 Watt)." Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as "A level near contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth, between 1016 and 1017 watts."
- Type II: "A civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star"--for example, the stage of successful construction of a Dyson sphere--"with energy consumption at ≈4×1033 erg/sec. Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization capable of utilizing and channeling the entire radiation output of its star. The energy utilization would then be comparable to the luminosity of our Sun, about 4×1033 erg/sec (4×1026 Watt)."
- Type III: "A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ≈4×1044 erg/sec." Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4×1044 erg/sec (4×1037 Watt).
- Nikolai Kardashev Kardashev scale citing Lemarchand, Guillermo A. "Detectability of Extraterrestrial Technological Activities". Coseti.
- In more primitive and creative ages, Zorba would have been the chief of a tribe. He would have gone before, opening up the path with a hatchet. Or else he would have been a renowned troubadour visiting castles, and everybody would have hung on his words — lords and ladies and servants' … In our ungrateful age, Zorba wanders hungrily round the enclosures like a wolf, or else sinks into becoming some pen-pusher's buffoon.
- Nikos Kazantzakis, in Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 6, p. 74
- Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed ... History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren’t realized . . . So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
- Henry Kissinger, Cited in The Watchtower 2004, 4/1, Identifying the Wild Beast and Its Mark.
L
- Even if the Democratic administration were resoundingly successful on all fronts, its initiatives would still be utterly insufficient to resolve the existential threat of climate breakdown and the devastation of our planet’s life-support systems. That’s because the multiple problems confronting us right now are symptoms of an even more profound problem: The underlying structure of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice... As long as government policies emphasize growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe...
We need to forge a new era for humanity — one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior. In short, we need to change the basis of our global civilization. We must move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to one that is life-affirming: an ecological civilization...- Jeremy Lent, What Does An Ecological Civilization Look Like? Yes! Magazine (16 February 2021)
- Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
- Charles Lindbergh, as quoted A. Scott Berg, p. 510, Lindbergh (1998)
M
- As social organization progresses and the governing class begins to reap the benefits of an improved bureaucratic machine, its superiority in culture and wealth, and especially its better organization and firmer cohesion, may compensate to some extent for the lack of individual energy; and so it may come about that considerable portions of the governing class, especially the circles that give the society its intellectual tone and direction, lose the habit of dealing with people of the lower classes and command them directly. This state of affairs generally enables frivolousness, and a sort of culture that is wholly abstract and conventional, to supplant a vivid sense of realities and a sound and accurate knowledge of human nature. Thinking loses virility. Sentimental and exaggeratedly humanitarian theories come to the fore, theories that proclaim the innate goodness of men, especially when they are not spoiled by civilization, or theories that uphold the absolute preferableness, in the arts of government, of gentle and persuasive means to severe authoritarian measures. People imagine, as Taine puts it, that since social life has flowed blandly and smoothly on for centuries, like an impetuous river confined withing sturdy dikes, the dikes have become superfluous and can readily be dispensed with, now that the river has learned its lesson. ...
It would seem therefore that there is a frequent, if not a universal, tendency in very mature civilizations, where ruling classes have acquired highly refined literary cultures, to wax enthusiastic, by a sort of antithesis, over the simple ways of savages, barbarians and peasants (the case of Arcadia!), and to clothe them with all sorts of virtues and sentiments that are as stereotyped as they are imaginary. Invariably underlying all such tendencies is the concept that was so aptly phrased by Rousseau, that man is good by nature but spoiled by society and civilization. This notion has had a very great influence on political thinking during the past hundred and fifty years.- Gaetano Mosca,The Ruling Class, p.117-9 (1939/1965)
- Let me make one more remark suggested by this trial and by others. There is no accepted test of civilization. It is not wealth, or the degree of comfort, or the average duration of life, or the increase of knowledge. All such tests would be disputed. In default of any other measure, may it not be suggested that as good a measure as any is the degree to which justice is carried out, the degree to which men are sensitive as to wrong-doing and desirous to right it?
- Sir John MacDonell, Historical Trials, chapter 7, p. 148 (1927)
- We are proudly conscious of the historic duty which we shall continue to fulfil; the defence of that Western civilisation which has been our heritage for centuries, but we know also that we have paid to the very last penny any debt we may have owed the West.
- Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Farewell order to the Finnish Army, 14th of March 1940
- The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
- John Stuart Mill, Ch. I: Introductory, p. 14-15, On Liberty (1859)
- If civilisation has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilisation. A civilisation that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy, must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilisation receives notice to quit the better. It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians.
- John Stuart Mill, p. 114, On Liberty (1859)
- Civilization itself, the at any rate habitable dwelling which was to be shored up by the war, wears a strange new air of precariousness.
- C. E, Montague, ‘’Disenchantment’’ (1922). Quoted in Hanson, Neil, ‘’The Unknown Soldier: The Story of the Missing of the Great War’’. London, Random House, 2011.
- Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
- William Morris, "How I became a Socialist", Justice, June 16th, 1894. Quoted in MacCarthy, Fiona, William Morris: A Life for Our Time. London, Faber & Faber, 2015.
N
- Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (—I do not say by what sort of feet—) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin—because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! … The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust -- a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile".
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888), Nuvision Publications, p. 55, 2007
R
- Being civilized signifies not taking your own life and those of others into consideration. It means letting your life be used, exploited and dominated by the always-superior interests of the collectivity where fate decreed that you would be born and live your life. And all for the financial, etc., gain of the authorities of the collectivity in question. In exchange for this submission one is granted the possibility of being accepted as a human being.
- Des Réfractaires, "How Nice to Be Civilized!" (1993), in Against Civilization (1999), p. 184
- Civilizations and social orders have not been geared to the fulfillment of human potential (even now, for all of our liberal thought), but to the suppression of abilities that did not fit in with the basic assumptions about the nature of the self. We inhibited any such evidence from conscious awareness, developing a kind of one-line official consciousness. Opposing data did not disappear, but formed powerful undercurrents that composed the unofficial knowledge of the race.
- Jane Roberts, in Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book, p. 275
- The moment that the topic of the pre-European African past is raised, many individuals are concerned for various reasons to know about the existence of African “civilizations.” Mainly, this stems from a desire to make comparisons with European “civilizations.” This is not the context in which to evaluate the so-called civilizations of Europe. It is enough to note the behavior of European capitalists from the epoch of slavery through colonialism, fascism, and genocidal wars in Asia and Africa. Such barbarism causes suspicion to attach to the use of the word “civilization” to describe Western Europe and North America.
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 34
- We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most critical elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
- Sir Ernest Rutherford, from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996), 26.
S
- I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980), p. 282,
- In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Episode 12: Encyclopedia Galactica, 0 min 45 sec
- Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.
- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994), p. 371,
- We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.
- Carl Sagan, interview with Anne Kalosh (1995)
- 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, Star Makers, Cosmos (Feb 2006).
- Darwin recognized that thus far the civilization of mankind has passed through four successive stages of evolution, namely, those based on the use of fire, the development of agriculture, the development of urban life and the use of basic science for technological advancement.
- Frederick Seitz, in The Science Matrix: The Journey, Travails, Triumphs (1992, 2012), 86.
- Essentially all civilizations that rose to the level of possessing an urban culture had need for two forms of science-related technology, namely, mathematics for land measurements and commerce and astronomy for time-keeping in agriculture and aspects of religious rituals.
- Frederick Seitz, from The Science Matrix: The Journey, Travails, Triumphs (1992, 1998), Preface, x.
- Instead of civilization being artificial it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of an embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.
- Herbert Spencer, Social Statistics (1851)
- The realization of justice is, in the actual state of things, a matter of life or death for society and for civilisation itself.
- African Spir, Words of a Sage (1937), p. 55,
T
- Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset.
- Because they didn't know better, they called it "civilization," when it was part of their slavery.
- Tacitus, Agricola (98), Book 1, paragraph 21
- Variant translation: Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.
- Because they didn't know better, they called it "civilization," when it was part of their slavery.
- I know how reluctant it makes us feel to give any credit for humanity to the western civilisation when we observe the brutalities into which this nationalism of theirs breaks out, instances of which are so numerous all the world over, — in the late war, in the lynching of negroes, in cowardly outrages allowed to be committed by European soldiers upon helpless Indians, in the rapacity and vandalism practised in Pekin during the Boxer war by the very people who are never tired of vulgarly applying the epithet of Hun to one section of their own confederates. But while I have never sought to gloss over or keep out of mind any of these ugly phenomena, I still aver that in the life of the West they have a large tract where their mind is free ; whence the circulation of their thought currents can surround the world.
- Rabindranath Tagore, "The Way To Unity" (1923) in Visva-Bharati Quarterly, Vol. I. No. 2, July 1923. Reprinted in Sisir Kumar Das, Sahitya Akademi,The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore: A miscellany, 1994,(p. 464).
V
- If Western Civilization were a person, we would be directing it to the nearest meeting of War-Preparers Anonymous. We would be telling it to stand up before the meeting and say "My name is Western Civilization. I am a compulsive War-Preparer. I have lost everything I ever cared about. I should have come here long ago. I first hit bottom in World War I".
- Kurt Vonnegut, "The Worst Addiction of Them All", The Nation Magazine, December 31 1983-January 7 1984. Quoted in Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation 1865-1990: Selections from the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1990.
W
- In one of my last conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilisation natural selection had no play and the fittest did not survive... It is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.
- Alfred Russel Wallace, Human selection, Popular Science Monthly 38: 90-102 (1890)
- It is not until a community or an individual has advanced a fair distance along the path of civilisation and shows by its laws its elimination of many of its most mischievous dispositions—notably sadism—that it can bear to admit the equality of women.
- Rebecca West, "Woman as Artist and Thinker" (1931), reprinted in Rebecca West, Woman as Artist and Thinker, edited by Helen Atkinson, Lincoln, Neb. : iUniverse, 2005.
- Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
- Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 5
- Indeed, we may regard it as an axiom, that the knowledge which is anywhere possessed of the art of healing, is the measure of the refinement and civilization to which the people have attained. Man is civilized by virtue of social relations; and refinement is the becoming divested from grossness, vulgarity, and the evil manners which are characteristic and incident to a living for one's self alone. Selfishness is savagery; and a state of society in which self-interest is the ruling element is hardly yet reclaimed from the state of barbarism. It is of little avail to appeal to skill in mechanics, engineering, and other attainments in the plane of material evolution. These are not adequate proof of spiritual advancement. Kindly sentiment toward others, sincere regard for their welfare, charity in will and act, make the only real culture and civilization. The art and technique of healing proceed from these qualities, and cannot flourish apart from them.
- There is good reason... for the supposition that such cycles of alternate savagery and civilization will continue till the earth shall become unfit, if such a crisis can ever arise, for the sustaining of human inhabitants. The germs of such changes are found in every country and social condition.
- Alexander Wilder, History of Medicine: A Brief Outline... (1901)
- You've got the temperament of a scholar, and you live on your own and write books. You don't have anything to do with civilization. You've been in London a few days and you can't wait to get back home. But how about the people who can't write books -- people there's no outlet for in this civilization? What about your new men who don't know what to do?
- Colin Wilson in The Glass Cage, p. 200 (1966)
Y
- Civilization begins to appear when a workable system for living, that is a proper relationship between man and nature, is established in accord with the features of a given region.
- Prof. Yoshinory Yasuda, quoted in Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Aditya Prakashan. ch. 2
- In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane... It refers to the attainment of both material well-being and the elevation of the human spirit, [but] since what produces man’s well-being and refinement is knowledge and virtue, civilization ultimately means the progress of man’s knowledge and virtue.
- Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (An Outline of a Theory of Civilization) (1875)
- Moreover, the argument for national polity, for Christianity, and for Confucianism... are also insufficient to bolster people’s hearts. What, then, will? I say there is one thing: namely, to establish our goal and advance toward civilization... The way in which to preserve this independence cannot be sought anywhere except in civilization.
- Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (An Outline of a Theory of Civilization) (1875)
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