"The Wisdom of Wilderness" in LIFE (22 December 1967)
Context: The wild world is the human world. Having evolved in it for millions of centuries, we are not far removed by a cloth of civilization. It is packed into our genes. In fact, the more power-driven, complex and delicate our civilization becomes, the more likelihood arises that a collapse will force us back to wildness. There is in wildness a natural wisdom that shapes all Earth's experiments with life. Can we tap this wisdom without experiencing the agony of reverting to wildness? Can we combine it with intellectual developments of which we feel so proud, use it to redirect our modern trends before they lead to a worse breakdown than past civilizations have experienced? I believe we can, and that to do so we must learn from the primitive.
“The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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Gregory Maguire 87
Novelist 1954Related quotes
“With usenet gone, we just don't teach our kids entertainment-level hyperbole any more.”
NANOG mailing list http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/2006-01/msg00593.html
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 2: The Singing School
Generation of Greatness (1957)
Context: The fact that civilization is becoming more intricate must not mean that we treat men for a longer period as immature. Does it not mean, perhaps, the opposite: that we must skillfully make them mature sooner, that we must find ways of handling the intricacy of our culture?
“Men must be reminded that as civilization becomes more industrial and urban”
Individualism and Socialism (1933)
Context: Men must be reminded that as civilization becomes more industrial and urban, relationships become more impersonal, and that much of our sinning is done as members of groups.
The Unseen Assassins https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216538/page/n49 (1932), p. 48; in later variants, "pity" was misquoted as "piety" in the Naval War College Review, Vol. 10 (1957), p. 27, and some internet citations have compressed "has become, for the European of our age" to read "has become for our age".
Regarding Trinny & Susannah Undress the Nation, as quoted in "Patronising posh girls or candid style advisers?" by Hannah Pool in The Guardian http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/fashion/story/0,,2207145,00.html (8 November 2007)
“Entertainment is all right, but entertainment with an idea behind it is much more important.”
On exposing antisemitism in Gentleman's Agreement. Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life by Lynn Haney (2003). page 148. ISBN 0786714735.