“Civilization tries to persuade us we are going towards something, a distant goal. We have forgotten that our only goal is to live, to live each and every day, and that if we live each and every day, our true goal is achieved.” IfsInspirationalTryingPurposeGoalAchieveCivilizationAchievementAimEverydayForgottenLive LifeAccomplishmentLiving My LifeLive Life HappyOne Life To LiveLifetime Achievement Author:Jean Giono
“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.” MeanIndividualGroupsAchieveCivilizationAdaptationOngoingCombining Book:Parable of the Sower Source: Parable of the Sower
“The highest civilizations -- the longest to last and I believe the most successful in human terms -- are those which have come the closest to achieving real understanding and mutual appreciation between men and women.” MenBelieveHumansRealLastsI BelieveUnderstandingTermSuccessfulAchieveCivilizationHighestMen And WomenAppreciationMutualClosest Author:Pearl S. Buck
“If civilization ever achieves a higher standard of what constitutes normality, it will have been the neurotic who led the way.” IfsWayHas BeensAchieveHigherCivilizationStandardsNeuroticNormalityHigher Standards Author:Nancy Hale
“Man... is an inextricable tangle of culture and biology. And not being simple, he is not simply good; he has... a kind of hell within him from which rise everlastingly the impulses which threaten his civilization. He has the faculty of imagining for himself more in the way of pleasure and satisfaction than he can possibly achieve. Everything that he gains he pays for in more than equal coin; compromise and the compounding with defeat constitute his best way of getting through the world. His best qualities are the result of a struggle whose outcome is tragic. Yet he is a creature of love.” MenWorldWayKindCultureSimplePleasureResultsPayQualityStruggleHellAchieveCivilizationCreaturesEqualGainsDefeatSatisfactionBest WayCompromiseImpulseOutcomesTragicBiologyFacultyCoins Author:Lionel
“Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.” MenKindCharacterDesireLiteratureExistenceFictionKnownDoubtEnvironmentAchieveCivilizationLowsOrganizationThirdsTragedyAimFundamentalsRateContemporaryRebelDelicateSensibilityDefectsAvoidedRevoltExhibitsInexplicableContemporary FictionElementalsAmerican Literature Book:H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series Source: H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series
“Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.” MindMatterEarthGoneProgressAchieveArmsCivilizationLaborFallenBeastEmpiresWildernessMarchConquestDomainMonumentTruestCoarseWild Beasts Author:Edwin Hubbel Chapin
“In Western Europe, Turkey is regarded as uncivilized, so they can't come in into the European Union until they're civilized. I think it's the other way around. If you could achieve the level of civilization of, say, Turkish intelectuals, it would be quite an achievement.” IfsThinkingWayWould BeLevelsAchieveCivilizationAchievementEuropeUnionsWesternCivilizedTurkeysEuropean UnionTurkishWestern EuropeUncivilized Author:Noam Chomsky