Civilization Quotes

"To be complex does not mean to be fragmented. This is the paradox and the genius of our Canadian civilization"

"By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else"

Solomon Schechter, Clergyman

"Through the wholesale destruction of the representatives of a class that from the beginning of history had been the directing and creative force in civilization, a process began which was almost mechanical"

Ralph A. Cram

"My play is the ultimate expression of my feeling of the twilight of Western civilization"

Richard Foreman, Playwright

"For in this century, within the next decades, will be decided for generations whether all mankind is to become Communist, whether the whole world is to become free, or whether, in the struggle, civilization as we know it is to be completely destroyed or completely changed"

Whittaker Chambers, Writer

"I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion, but it is a civilization bent on destroying ours"

Tom Tancredo, Politician

"I should like to say that I am as proud of my Chinese heritage and background as I am devoted to modern science, a part of human civilization of Western origin, to which I have dedicated and I shall continue to dedicate my work"

Chen Ning Yang, Physicist

"Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason"

Theodore Dreiser, Novelist

"I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing"

Ian Smith

"But it is obvious that our fathers, whose efforts have planted these great and prosperous cities along the once lonely trails of our own broad land, received all the fundamentals of civilization as a heritage from their European ancestors"

James H. Breasted

"The evidence of a Jewish civilization going back more than two millennia is overwhelmingly borne out in the archaeology of the region. The heritage of the Jews in Palestine is documented"

Jack Schwartz, Scientist

"What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years"

Sonny Rollins, Musician

"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, Writer

"Our civilization is now in the transition stage between the age of warring empires and a new age of world unity and peace"

John Boyd Orr, Politician

"I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him"

Pauline Kael, Critic

"We strain to tell Americans and aliens in this country that there's nothing unique about America, nothing unique about American civilization, nothing that requires their allegiance, nothing of great value that they should sacrifice for"

Tom Tancredo, Politician

"In any case, in so far as our knowledge of the universe carries us, the advent of civilization for the first time on our globe represents the highest ascent of the life processes to which evolution had anywhere attained"

James H. Breasted

"By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any student of early culture proposing that the crude contemporary art of the early Babylonians is the product of a civilization earlier than that of the Nile"

James H. Breasted

"We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse"

Maurice Strong, Businessman

"The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war"

John Boyd Orr, Politician

"Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest"

Joseph A. Schumpeter, Economist

"It is the recognition of history as a record of human experience which has inevitably resulted in the inclusion of this conquest of civilization within the framework of a complete human history"

James H. Breasted

"If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power"

Harriet Martineau, Writer

"To the present writer a careful study of the facts now available seems to leave no doubt that civilization was born at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean"

James H. Breasted

"Christianity is the very root and foundation of Western civilization"

Dinesh D'Souza, Author

"We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents cover 109,000 deaths. That is serious matter"

Julian Assange, Activist

"But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group"

Herbert Read, Poet

"I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses"

Grace Paley, Writer

"In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown"

Felix Adler, Educator

"It's very difficult to marry into another civilization"

Leslie Caron, Actress

"To one who believes that really good industrial conditions are the hope for a machine civilization, nothing is more heartening than to watch conference methods and education replacing police methods"

Frances Perkins, Politician

"A civilization that only looks inward will stagnate. We have to keep looking outward; we have to keep finding new avenues for human endeavor and human expression"

John L. Phillips, Astronaut

"The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists"

Herbert Read, Poet

"New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you"

David Letterman, Comedian

"That is why I come forward tonight without any political label, without any bias, but just simply as an Englishman to say to you: a crime is being committed against civilization"

John Amery, Politician

"It's too hard a life for me. I could only do it - check out in that sense - if I checked out somewhere that was luxurious and within hailing distance of civilization"

Derek Jacobi, Actor

"It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood"

Charles Eastman, Author

"If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology"

Clifford D. Simak, Writer

"Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not"

Daniel Pipes, Author

"If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force"

Auberon Herbert

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