Home / Topics / Civilization Quotes

Civilization Quotes

Browse 3690 quotes about Civilization.

Civilization Quotes

“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 better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?”

Ifs Men World Humans Doe Today Human Beings Progress Depends Civilization Average Great Men Better Now Pharaohs

Book:To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”

Source: Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution

“The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.”

Progress Civilization Concepts Confused Continents Conservation

Book:The Peter Matthiessen Reader: Nonfiction, 1959-1991

Source: The Peter Matthiessen Reader: Nonfiction, 1959-1991

“I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head. No Jacob's ladder this, no, but rather Civilization's Ladder, if you will.”

Ifs World Age Humanity Progress Civilization Miracle Biblical Ladders Jacob

Book:Cloud Atlas: A Novel

Source: Cloud Atlas: A Novel

“It is the business of future to be dangerous.... The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.”

Process Progress Dangerous Civilization Future Majors Wrecks

Author:Alfred North Whitehead

“In his scientific genius, man has wrought material miracles and has transformed his world. He has harnassed nature and has developed great civilizations. But he has never learned very well how to live with himself. The values he has created have been predominantly materialistic; his spiritual values have lagged far behind. He has demonstrated little spiritual genius and has made little progress toward the realization of human brotherhood. In the contemporary atomic age, this could prove man's fatal weakness.”

“By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death”

Different Culture Differences Progress Civilization Favors Eliminating Suppressing

Author:Octavio Paz

“The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us”

Culture Progress Civilization Ideals Technique Cult Implicit

Author:Octavio Paz

“I wouldn't say that religion has promoted the social progress of mankind. I say that it has been a detriment to the progress of civilization, and I would also say this: that the emancipation of the mind from religious superstition is as essential to the progress of civilization as is emancipation from physical slavery.”

Mind Has Beens Social Religious Progress Atheism Mankind Civilization Essentials Slavery Superstitions Emancipation Social Progress

Author:Culbert Olson

“I am well convinced that Aerial Navigation will form a most prominent feature in the progress of civilization.”

Wells Form Progress Civilization Convinced Features Airplane Prominent Navigation

Book:Aeronautical and miscellaneous note-book (ca. 1799-1826): of Sir George Cayley

Source: Aeronautical and miscellaneous note-book (ca. 1799-1826): of Sir George Cayley

“Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.”

May Littles Sin Gone Virtue Progress Evolution Civilization Elements Machines Little Things Marvelous Worthless Splendid Grind Powder

Book:Oscar Wilde - The Major Works

Source: Oscar Wilde - The Major Works

“Whenever Nature's bounty is in danger of exhaustion, the chemist has sought for a substitute. The conquest of disease has made great progress as a result of your efforts. Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of the nation. Waste materials, formerly cast aside, are now being utilized.”

“Twenty centuries of 'progress' have brought the average citizen a vote, a national anthem, a Ford, a bank account, and a high opinion of himself, but not the capacity to live in high density without befouling and denuding his environment, nor a conviction that such capacity, rather than such density, is the true test of whether he is civilized.”

Source: Game Management 118

“We must ask whether our machine technology makes us proof against all those destructive forces which plagued Roman society and ultimately wrecked Roman civilization. Our reliance - an almost religious reliance - upon the power of science and technology to forever ensure the progress of our society, might blind us to some very real problems which cannot be solved by science and technology.”

“The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation.”

Firsts Important Seems Science Nations Community Known Progress Influence Century Civilization Accounts Realised Nineteenth Century Successors Civilised Scientific Progress

Book:Education and National Progress

Source: Education and National Progress

“The beginning of civilisation is the discovery of some useful arts, by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions. The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to particular nations ... to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners;- so that in reality the origin as well as the progress and improvement of civil society is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions.”

Source: Salmonia: or, Days of fly-fishing; in a series of conversations: with some account of the habits of fishes belonging to the genus Salmo. Consolation in travel, or, The last days of a philosopher

“We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all-that the wealth of individuals and of state is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.”

Should Humans Has Beens States Individual Born Wealth Human Beings Class Progress Expression Development Civilization Should Have Should Have Been Eugenics Euthanasia

Book:The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic

Source: The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic