453 quotes found
“The constant tug between nature and civilization is what keeps on our toes. Though of course, that did rather beg the question of how you defined nature and how you defined civilization.”
“Handwriting enables civilization.”
“Civilization was a relentless war that man was doomed to lose eventually. - Pg. 195”
“Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.”
“We only refer to sapient creatures as civilized when their society is willingly self-correcting. That means that any problem or imbalance that arises is fixed, and I mean really fixed - not ignored...”
“Anyone who has ever watched children amuse themselves will recognize that the scientific and technological face of civilization is precisely the result of play in its purest form. Just as children ...”
“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve we...”
“Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediter...”
“Scientists are the true driving force of civilization.”
“We know we are a species obsessed with itself and its own past and origins. We know we are capable of removing from the sanctuary of the earth shards and fragments, and gently placing them in museu...”
“It (modernization) is just another jungle closing in.”
“PharaohsIt took Khufu twenty-three years to build his Great Pyramid at Giza, where some eleven hundred stone blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons, had to be quarried, moved, and set in p...”
“POUND We spend twelve hundred generations developing so-called civilization to the point where it produces an expert who can offer us salvation from our superstitions, and all we end up with ...”
“What is word for good together living? Nobody shits in the well?"I laughed. "Civilization?"He nodded, splaying his fingers: amusement. "Yes," he said. "Speaking with hands is civilization.""But smi...”
“Every human generation has its own illusions with regard to civilization; some believe they are taking part in its upsurge, others that they are witnesses of its extinction. In fact, it always both...”
“Theres just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in the upbuilding of one.”
“What 'primitive' men called gossip, 'civilized' men call news.”
“Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didin't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we didn't have any delinquents. Without a prison, there can't be no delinquents. We ...”
“There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstitio...”
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of the nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose - and is a test to the quality of a nation's civilization.”
