“What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the Greeks?”

— Jean-Baptiste Say

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. xxix

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the Greeks?" by Jean-Baptiste Say?

Jean-Baptiste Say 72

French economist and businessman 1767–1832

Related quotes

“There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

“Still how unenlightened and ignorant are the very nations we term civilized!”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. lix-lx

“…skies and clouds were still regarded as something quite apart from the rest of the picture, and, indeed, are still so regarded by the less advanced.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Clouds. Their use, and practical instructions as to how to photography them, p. 92

“Zionism has gained my full sympathy and I appreciate it much higher than what is called nationalism in modern France. It is a progressive movement, a reawakening,
of which I expect a lot for the entire civilization.”

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) First Czechoslovak president

“the radical feminist revolution is nothing less than a destruction of our civilization…We are no longer what were were. The West has collapsed.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

How Civilizations Fall

“What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Address to the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois. (21 July 1952); published in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952) p. 17

“From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 250)
Earth (1990)

“Nationalism, then Islamism, both twentieth-century inventions, destroyed the Greek civilization in Egypt that had endured for three thousand years.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 5, §1 (p. 158)

“People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

25 December 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 5. 
Context: It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

“What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the Greeks?”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jean-Baptiste Say 72

Related quotes

Related topics