"Cities are the crucible of civilization."
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Civilization quotes
Civilization
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Civilization quotes (page 36 of 119)
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"What we are confronted with now is a growing perception that if we desire a certain type of civilization and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it."
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"We must not stay as we are, doing always what was done last time, or we shall stick in the mud. Yet neither must we undertake a new world as catastrophic Utopians, and wreck our civilization in our hurry to mend it."
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"The problem with the press is that they can't tell the difference between a bicycle crash and the end of civilization."
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"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."
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"Do not confuse objectives with methods. When the nation becomes substantially united in favor of planning the broad objectives of civilization, then true leadership must unite thought behind definite methods."
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"For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service."
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"You cannot organize civilization around the core of militarism and at the same time expect reason to control human destinies."
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"But that's just the aim of civilization - to make everything a source of enjoyment."
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"It's fitting, then, that we begin this exploration of ourselves and of the world with music, and more specifically with a musical quality called vibrato. This pulsation that wells up within the sounded note can lead us to what is most spontaneous and creative in human life, and possibly even to deeper mysteries--to powers of knowing and doing which we have lost or given away during the epoch of civilization, and which perhaps we may now regain."
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"I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice."
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"Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated."
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"The greatest threat to civility - and ultimately civilization - is an excess of certitude. The world is much menaced just now by people who think that the world and their duties in it are clear and simple. They are certain that they know what - who - created the universe and what this creator wants them to do to make our little speck in the universe perfect, even if extreme measures - even violence - are required."
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"Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men."
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"A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform."
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"We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments."
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"The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do."
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"Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there."
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"Imagine what things would be like if the news media actually sided with civilization."
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"And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaininggross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?"
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