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?”
“Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies fromindifference toward the unique values which created it.”
“Most of human history had been industry versus nature, with industry winning.”
“But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization.”
“The necessity, then, of those “lesser breeds without the law”—those wogs, barbarians, niggers—is this: one must not become more free, not become more base than they: must not be used as they are us...”
“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...”
“If you have heard that I am wild, you can contradict the rumour,(...) I am tame. I am quite tame; I am about the tamest beast that crawls. I drink too much of the same kind of whisky at the same ti...”
“Bell defined civilization in the language of a Bloomsbury connoisseur: ‘A taste for truth and beauty, tolerance, intellectual honesty, fastidiousness, a sense of humour, good manners, curiosity, a ...”
“Those who haven't been exposed to the hypocrisies of a civilized education react to things 'naturally', as they happen. It is in the here and now that they are either happy or unhappy, joyful or sa...”
“They say the level of civilization is proportionate to the degree of cleanliness of the skin. Assuming that man has a soul, it must, in all likelihood, be housed in the skin.”
“We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages.”
“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”
“Scientists are the true driving force of civilization.”
“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 is ano...”
“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...”
“There’s just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in the upbuilding of one.”
“Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a discipl...”
