453 quotes found
“The equality prescribed by the Revolution is simply the weak man's revenge upon the strong; it's just what we saw in the past, but in reverse; that everyone should have his turn is only meet. And i...”
“What was civilization ever, really, but the attempt by man to talk himself into being good?”
“The more civilization progresses, the hollower it becomes and the easier to destroy it.”
“... man by nature is not a wild or unsocial creature, neither was he born so, but makes himself what he naturally is not, by vicious habit; and that again on the other side, he is civilized and gro...”
“there was no television in the Netherlands during the afternoons!”
“Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies fromindifference toward the unique values which created it.”
“It was not exasperation.... It was anger for the relentless force of evolution that insisted on endowing man with increased powers without removing the vestigial vices that prevented him from using...”
“Nothing distresses the civilized person like unfettered nature. The Grand Canyon seen from behind the railing is indeed a splendid sight, but as soon as the desert reclaims your golf course that is...”
“After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization.”
“Most of human history had been industry versus nature, with industry winning.”
“The engineered built environments or domesticated landscapes of certain Amazonian peoples were as impressive as any Egyptian pyramid, Mesopotamian city, or Chinese terrace-irrigiation system. In th...”
“Pattaya is what the end of civilization will look like.”
“Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If our civilization goes on like this, only one man will laugh, because he ca...”
“But, for myself, the Earths records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization.”
“But the bars that held you, the bars that kept you in were the luxury and soft living. It is hard to walk out on a thing like that”
“Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.”
“The necessity, then, of those lesser breeds without the lawthose wogs, barbarians, niggersis this: one must not become more free, not become more base than they: must not be used as they are used, ...”
“An urbanite does not become a civilized person just because he has had an education. What one assimilates in the city is book-learning and knowledge derived through emulating educated men. But that...”
“I cannot think who my residents hurt but how I can give them tools to remain on the right side of civilization.”
“Surely it is more civilized to kill one man every few months, hold up his head for all to behold, say his name, and return home for a feast than to slaughter nameless millions.”
