453 quotes found
“London was but a foretaste of this nomadic civilization which is altering human nature so profoundly, and throws upon personal relations a stress greater than they have ever borne before. Under cos...”
“O what we ben! And what we come to!”
“So much for progress. How quickly civilization could dissolve into its more ugly elements.”
“Without wonder, there's no progress. Nothing gets done, nobody goes anywhere. If you don't exercise your capacity for wonder... well, use it or lose it. A civilization without wonder is a civilizat...”
“Since ideology, particularly in it's shallower versions, is peculiarly destructive of the capacity to apprehend and appreciate irony, I suggest that the recovery of the ironic might be our fifth pr...”
“I may now add that civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great u...”
“Modern man has successfully razed the imaginative landscapes of primal peoples the whole world over. Kill the gods first, slaughter the sacred animals, rewrite the mythologies, and build roads thro...”
“Revenge is a human trait, one that has been the cause of the destruction of civilisations many times over. But the goblins live on in peace and harmony, taking little notice of us and our mistakes.”
“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”
“Empathy is a big part of Sparkleponies, because its also my belief (as a history and political science major) that societies that dont practice rational empathy inevitably collapse either by fomen...”
“Primary purposes of a mirror: (1) To help civilized men realize their imperfections, and, (2) To help the imperfect hide their imperfections.”
“Sadism ... is a massive cultural fact that appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth century and that constitutes one of the greatest conversions of the occidental imagination ... madness of ...”
“Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness in turn leads to sanctimonious self-righteousness, which breeds intolerance, upon which harsh judgment quickly follows, yielding...”
“Civilization did not come with fire. It came with the discovery of how to use fire to heat water.”
“It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a ...”
“Thats the vicious truth doctor. For me and persons like me, we are experiencing a divorce from our own individual self by sensing our sensations, emotions, behaviors as not belonging to the same pe...”
“I had rather face wild beasts and diseases than the perils of civilization."There is a proverb, which Tom was kind enough not to voice: be careful what you wish for. Unfortunately, not only did I g...”
“In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. Th...”
“Freeways flickering; cell phones chiming a tuneWe're riding to Utopia; road map says we'll be arriving soonCaptains of the old order clinging to the reinsAssuring us these aches inside are only gro...”
“If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being ...”
