Cassandra (1860)
Context: There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived. The stimulus, the training, the time, are all three wanting to us; or, in other words, the means and inducements are not there.
Look at the poor lives we lead. It is a wonder that we are so good as we are, not that we are so bad. In looking round we are struck with the power of the organisations we see, not with their want of power. Now and then, it is true, we are conscious that there is an inferior organisation, but, in general, just the contrary.
“If the present civilisation does not acquire some stable moral fondations ("bases morales stables", Fr.), its existence will hardly be more assured than that of the civilisations that have preceeded it, and which have fallen”
or collapse, or failed
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 41.
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African Spir 98
Russian philosopher 1837–1890Related quotes
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 60.
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 37.
“Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics.”
"Six ways the internet will save civilisation" in WIRED magazine (9 November 2010) http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/12/start/apocalypse-no
Context: Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption. But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse.
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)
Speech at a Soviet Official banquet http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106776, St George's Halls, the Kremlin (30 March 1987)
Second term as Prime Minister
The Conferences V.2 ( online http://books.google.com/books?id=k3CrvJJZkqEC&pg=PA44)
“We must have a stable policy environment. No more ATRAS - ABANTE.”
2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero