“Music has power to create a universe or to destroy a civilization.”

—  Katherine Neville, book The Eight

Source: The Eight

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Music has power to create a universe or to destroy a civilization." by Katherine Neville?
Katherine Neville photo
Katherine Neville4
American novelist 1945

Related quotes

Zaman Ali photo

“Books have the power to create, destroy or change civilizations.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

"Humanity", Ch.II "Ideologies: A way to live", Part IV

Anthony Robbins photo

“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Source: Awaken the Giant Within (1992), p. 75
Context: Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.

Jean-François Revel photo

“Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is working to destroy it.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Cited in The Effects of Mass Immigration On Canadian Living Standards and Society (2009). ed. Grubel, The Frasier Institute, pp. 202-203 ISBN 088975246X, 9780889752467
1980s, How Democracies Perish (1983)

Mike Oldfield photo

“In this world, everything has a pulse or a vibration. This sound is unique to each living or non-living thing and in itself creates a music that no-one can hear. I believe that this has a very powerful resonance with, and a deep effect on, our lives. What would happen if we took this further and applied it to bigger things, more powerful things; like an entire solar system or galaxy say, what would that sound like?
Musica Universalis is the ancient theory that every celestial body, the sun, the moon and the stars, has an inner music. This is a harmonic and mathematical concept derived from the movements of the planets in the solar system. The music created is inaudible to the human ear.
Music of the Spheres is my interpretation of this theory. Every planet and every star; the whole universe has music within it that no-one can hear. This is what it would sound like if it was set free. This is Music of the Spheres.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

from the introduction to Music of the Spheres

Daniel Barenboim photo

“Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

Daniel Barenboim: 'Spaces of dialogue' http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/frostinterview/2013/07/20137239147831924.html, 04 Aug 2013.

“No culture has ever exceeded Western civilization in power and extent. Our society now covers more than half of the globe, extending in space from Poland to the east of Australia i n the west. In the course of this expansion, most of it during the last five centuries, the power of Western civilization has been so great that it has destroyed, almost without thinking of it, hundreds of other societies, including five or six other civilizations.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 334

“Professor Toynbee reminds us that sixteen civilizations have already been destroyed and that nine others are mortally sick and destined to go the way of the preceding sixteen. This just leaves one, our own civilization. And it is highly vulnerable because it is a machine civilization, it is a city civilization, and this generation has power to smash the machine and demolish the city.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

Will Durant photo

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Epilogue: "Why Rome Fell", p. 665
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944)

Albert Schweitzer photo

“We cannot understand what happens in the universe. What is glorious in it is united with what is full of horror. What is full of meaning is united to what is senseless. The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive — it creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates, and therefore it remains to us a riddle. And we must inevitably resign ourselves to this.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 5

John Marshall photo

“These are, 1st. That a power to create implies a power to preserve; 2d. That a power to destroy, if wielded by a different hand, is hostile to, and incompatible with these powers to create and to preserve; 3d. That, where this repugnancy exists, that authority which is supreme must control, not yield to that over which it is supreme.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 426
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Context: This great principle is that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are supreme; that they control the Constitution and laws of the respective States, and cannot be controlled by them. From this, which may be almost termed an axiom, other propositions are deduced as corollaries, on the truth or error of which, and on their application to this case, the cause has been supposed to depend. These are, 1st. That a power to create implies a power to preserve; 2d. That a power to destroy, if wielded by a different hand, is hostile to, and incompatible with these powers to create and to preserve; 3d. That, where this repugnancy exists, that authority which is supreme must control, not yield to that over which it is supreme.

Related topics