“The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.”

The State of German Literature (1827).
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

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Thomas Carlyle481

Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

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“We have now in our possession three instruments of civilization, unknown to antiquity. These are the art of printing; free representative government; and, lastly, a pure and spiritual religion, the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, the mighty spring of bold and lofty designs, the great sanctuary of moral power.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

Edward Everett, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 141.

“Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

“This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Presence of the Kingdom (1948), p. 37
Context: People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it. Thus from the moment that technics, the State, or production, are facts, we must worship them as facts, and we must try to adapt ourselves to them. This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact.

“What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind, and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

Anti-Slavery Speech (January 1852) http://books.google.com/books?id=SCpVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA22 Published in The Works of Wendell Phillips, Street & Smith (1902), p. 22-23 <br class="br">1850s

“Cool, calm, and unemotional. Protestant, for short. It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all, which is why it's not a great religion. All great religions are built on shame. You don't have any of that if you're Protestant. You go to the church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On Protestants.
Like, Totally (2006)

“It was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world's efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.
And so it is to the printing press — to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news — that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Kennedy here references Francis Bacon’s Aphorism 129 of Novum Organum: Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation: and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.
1961, Address to ANPA

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.”

Henry Beston book The Outermost House

p. 57: Ch. 3 http://books.google.com/books?lr=&id=edhCAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+three+great+elemental+sounds+in+nature+are+the+sound+of+rain+the+sound+of+wind+in+a+primeval+wood+and+the+sound+of+outer+ocean+on+a+beach%22&pg=PA57#v=onepage <br class="br">The Outermost House, 1928

“The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armory of the modern commander…”

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat

The Evolution of A Revolt (1920)

“A civilization which is dominated by this matter-of-fact insight must prevail against any cultural scheme that lacks this element. This characteristic of western civilization comes to a head in modern science, and finds its highest material expression in the technology of the machine industry.”

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American academic

Source: "The Place of Science in Modern Civilization", 1906, p. 355

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: "The Place of Science in Modern Civilization", 1906, p. 355

“The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.”

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Thomas Carlyle481

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