Best individual & civilization Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.”

Mean Made Culture Courses Individual Given Process Parent Quality Steps Groups Civilization Independent Division Cellular

Book:Selected writings: poetry and criticism

Source: Selected writings: poetry and criticism

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.”

Individual Liberty Civilization Individuality

Book:Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”

“We have evidence all around us in our daily analytic practice and in contemporary world history that this earth-shaking archetypal event is taking place here and now. It has already started. It is manifesting itself in international relations; in the breakdown of the social structures of Western civilization; in political, ethnic, and religious groupings; as well as within the psyches of individuals- the momentous event of the coming of the self into conscious realization.”

“No matter how much restriction civilization imposes on the individual, he nevertheless finds some way to circumvent it. Wit is the best safety valve modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit.".”

Men Way Needs Matter Individual Modern Civilization Safety Wit Nevertheless Restriction Repression Modern Man Valve

Author:Sigmund Freud

“It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend.”

Should Humans May Important Reason Individual Force Difficult Growth Principles Depends Civilization Prove Essentials Tasks Limitation Bows Preservation Human Reason

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“The American city should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feels safe on his streets and in the house of his friends. It should be a place where each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today.”

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965

“To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America.”

Self America Individual Effort Path Creation Civilization Achievement Beats Glory Invention Artistic Enterprise Pioneers Self Reliant Individual Effort Artistic Creation

Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.”

Source: Road to Science Fiction 2

“There is one common condition for the lot of women in Western civilization and all other civilizations that we know about for certain, and that is, woman as a sex is disliked and persecuted, while as an individual she is liked, loved, and even, with reasonable luck, sometimes worshipped.”

Knows Sometimes Certain Individual Sex Women Common Conditions Civilization Luck Western Reasonable Western Civilization Persecuted

Author:Rebecca West

“What's true for us as individual humans is true for the civilization we create: a sprint culture, seeking ever greater speed and power in all things cannot endure.”

Humans Culture Individual Greater Civilization All Things Endure Seeking Speed Sprint

Author:Ed Ayres

“All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander or Ghengis Khan had never been born, some other individual would have filled his place and executed the design of the Hellenic or Mongolic expansion; but the Alexanders of philosophy and religion, of science and art, seem less expendable; their impact seems less determined by economic challenges and social pressures; and they seem to have a much wider range of possibilities to influence the direction, shape and texture of civilizations.”

“Our "society" is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she's exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation, further, enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual by being a "rugged individualist", a loner, equating non-co-operation and solitariness with individuality.”

“Freedom is neither a legal invention nor a philosophical conquest, the cherished possession of civilizations more valid than others because they alone have been able to create or preserve it. It is the outcome of an objective relationship between the individual and the space he occupies, between the consumer and the resources at his disposal.”

Has Beens Able Individual Space Civilization Resources Philosophical Possession Invention Objectives Consumers Preserves Outcomes Conquest

Book:Tristes Tropiques

Source: Tristes Tropiques

“Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition, and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery. Equality of rights is a peculiar feature of democracies. These rights are properly divided into civil and political, though even these definitions are not to be taken as absolute, or as literally exact.”

“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.”

Mean Individual Groups Achieve Civilization Adaptation Ongoing Combining

Book:Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower

“When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims -- national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.”

May War Whole Humanity Evil Individual Nations Accepting Objects Civilization Mets Argument Ultimate Aim Agree Independence Impact Worthy Terrorism Terrorist Justify Objections Idealist

Author:Benjamin Netanyahu

“"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.”

Persons Self Universe Individual Understanding Answers Civilization Certainty Meaning Of Life Awe What Is The Meaning Of Life What Is The Meaning

Author:Julian Jaynes

“A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization.”

Source: Blade of Tyshalle

“Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.”

Men States Character Form Individual Nations Conditions Depends Civilization Prove Institutions Improvement Personal Improvement

Book:Self-help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance

Source: Self-help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance

“Man's Chief purpose is the creation and preservation of values; that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life.”

Men Giving Humans Wisdom Purpose Values Politics Individual Economy Creation Civilization Chiefs Human Life Liberalism Significance Participation Preservation

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Necessity is always the first stimulus to industry, and those who conduct it with prudence, perseverance and energy will rarely fail. Viewed in this light, the necessity of labor is not a chastisement, but a blessing,--the very root and spring of all that we call progress in individuals and civilization in nations.”

Firsts Light Individual Energy Nations Progress Failing Industry Civilization Blessing Spring Labor Roots Perseverance Prudence Stimulus Chastisement

Book:Self-help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct

Source: Self-help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct

“So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.”

Should Ends Dies Individual Born Pleasure Civilization Pursuit Stoicism Unbelief Stoic Scepticism Undisciplined Epicurean

Author:Will Durant

“Nations, like individuals, live and die; but civilization cannot die.”

Dies Individual Nations Civilization

Book:Life & Writings of Joseph Mazzini

Source: Life & Writings of Joseph Mazzini

“The right of individual property is no doubt the very corner-stone of civilization, as hitherto understood; but I am a little impatient of being told that property is entitled to exceptional consideration because it bears all the burdens of the state. It bears those, indeed, which can be most easily borne, but poverty pays with its person the chief expenses of war, pestilence, and famine.”

Source: Essays, English and American

“A modern and humane civilization must control conception or sink into barbaric cruelty to individuals.”

Individual Modern Birth Civilization Cruelty Conception Humane Birth Control Barbaric

Author:Marie Stopes

“Most people are shaped to the form of their culture because of the enormous malleability of their original endowment. They are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born. It does not matter whether, with the Northwest Coast, it requires delusions of self-reference, or with our own civilization the amassing of possessions. In any case the great mass of individuals take quite readily the form that is presented to them.”

People Doe Self Matter Form Culture Individual Force Born Cases Society Civilization Mass Originals Possession Enormous Delusion Plastic Coast Endowment

Book:PATTERNS OF CULTURE

Source: PATTERNS OF CULTURE

“Society in its full sense ... is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.”

Lasts Culture Individual Society Civilization Elements Analysis Contribution Entity Threshold

Book:PATTERNS OF CULTURE

Source: PATTERNS OF CULTURE

“In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed.”

“The Socratic maxim that the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom has profound significance for our understanding of society. Most of the advantages of social life, especially in the more advanced forms that we call "civilization" rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in the pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he has himself acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess.”

“Togetherness, for me, means teamwork. It makes us reflect how completely dependent we are upon one another in our social and commercial life. The more diversified our labors and interests have become in the modern world, the more surely need to integrate our efforts to justify our individual selves and our civilization.”

World Needs Mean Self Individual Social Interest Effort Modern Civilization Labor Dependent Justify Teamwork Modern World Togetherness Integrating

Author:Walt Disney

“Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and...each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests...civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering intelligence, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and which remains widely dispersed among individuals.”

Way Facts Helping Individual Civilization Members Benefits Overcoming Remains Ignorant Conquer Limitation Possessed Acquisition Fractions More Knowledge Utilization

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“I think if I were to express my wish, it would be that we are more regionally self-reliant. And I dont mean people being survivalists, I mean regionally self-reliant. So that you have these individual cells. The idea of having different solutions in different areas, so that we have a very robust, durable civilization.”

People Ifs Thinking Mean Ideas Different Self Would Be Individual Wish Civilization Solutions Areas Cells Robust Mean People My Wish Self Reliant

Author:Daniel Suarez

“The stamping out of the artist is one of the blind goals of every civilization. When a civilization becomes so standardized that the individual can no longer make an imprint on it, then that civilization is dying. The mass mind has taken over and another set of national glories is heading for history's scrap heap.”

Mind Art Artist Individual Goal Taken Dying Civilization Mass Glory Blind Headings Scrap

Author:Elie Faure

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