Quotes about civilization (3002 quotes, page 17)

“Technological civilizations don’t last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 27 (pp. 248-249)

Sense

“Kailash Satyarthi has dedicated his life to helping the millions of children in India who are forced into slavery and work in torrid conditions. His award is an acknowledgement of the tireless, decades-long campaigning by civil society activists on child trafficking and child labor in India.”

Salil Shetty (1961) human rights campaigner

abcnews.go.com http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/peace-prize-childrens-rights-met-praise-26098345.

Life , Children , Help

“Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera, is not a liberal or a conservative value. It’s an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

"The Situation with Tucker Carlson" on MSNBC (5 August 2005) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8870977/

Thinking

“The United States and the post-Stalinist Soviet Union … share the same cultural aims. Both issue from the assumption that wealth is a superior and adequate substitute for symbolic impoverishment. Both American and Soviet cultures are essentially variants of the same belief in wealth as the functional equivalent of a high civilization. In both cultures, the controlling symbolism has been stripped down to belief in the efficacy of wealth. Quantity has become quality. The answer to all questions of “what for?””

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

is “more.”
The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Question , Wealth

“The conception of life as constructive rather than antagonistic effort finds beautiful illustration in every approach that we make toward true civilization. You measure the quality and the value of the civilization of individuals or peoples, not by the houses which they live in or the clothes which they wear, but by the width and power of their sympathy.”

Charles Fletcher Dole (1845–1927) Unitarian minister, speaker, and writer

The Theology of Civilization (May 1899)

Life , People , Beauty , Effort

“Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization.”

Hal Abelson (1947) computer scientist

Source: MIT's maverick view of intellectual property worth considering http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA18.01C.hendricks0318.768fcaac.html

Universe

“Barbarism has its vices, its sophistries, no less than civilization. Your cynicisms and sophistications are weak and childish beside the elemental cynicism, the vital sophistication of what you call savagery. If our virtues were unspoiled as a new-born panther cub, our sins were older than Nineveh.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Thunder-Rider" (c. 1936)

“Modern civilization, characterized by an enormous increase in the output of mechanized knowledge with the newspaper, the book, the radio and the cinema, has produced a state of numbness, pleasure and self-complacency perhaps only equalled by laughing-gas. In the words of Oscar Wilde we have sold our birthright for a mess of facts. The demands of the machine are insatiable. The danger of shaking men out of the soporific results of mechanized knowledge is similar to that of attempting to arouse a drunken man or one who has taken an overdose of sleeping tablets. The necessary violent measures will be disliked. We have had university professors threatened with the loss of their positions for less than this.”

Harold Innis (1894–1952) Canadian professor of political economy

Source: Essays in Canadian Economic History (1956), p. 383 (originally from an essay entitled The Church in Canada first published in 1947).

Men , Pleasure , Books , Knowledge

“Mac continued to write scathing commentary on assorted hypocrisies in high places and low, without which hypocrisies, he cheerfully conceded, civilized life would be impossible.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Epilogue (p. 506)
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001)

Life

“The spectacle of human beings fighting each other for whatever reason, including, at certain well-publicized times, staggering sums of money, is enormously disturbing because it violates a taboo of our civilization. Many men and women, however they steel themselves, cannot watch a boxing match because they cannot allow themselves to see what it is they are seeing. One thinks helplessly, This can’t be happening, even as, and usually quite routinely, it is happening. In this way boxing as a public spectacle is akin to pornography: in each case the spectator is made a voyeur, distanced, yet presumably intimately involved, in an event that is not supposed to happening as it is happening. The pornographic "drama," though as fraudulent as professional wrestling, makes a claim for being about something absolutely serious, if not humanly profound: it is not so much about itself as about the violation of a taboo. That the taboo is spiritual rather than physical, or sexual — that our most valuable human experience, love, is being is being desecrated, parodied, mocked — is surely at the core of our culture’s fascination with pornography.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

On Boxing (1987)

Love , Women , Men , Money

“Commodore Marlin: My friend, I ask you a plain civil question; will you give me a plain, civil answer?
Sam Slick: Thinks to myself, Commodore, the question is civil enough, but you ain't civil, and your manner ain't civil.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

Sam Slick's wise saws and modern instances: or, What he said, did, or invented, Volumen 1 https://archive.org/details/samslickswisesaw00haliuoft (1853), p. 185, Hurst and Blackett.

Question , Thinking

“My friend, there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry.... There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it — all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation... Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman [Jefferson] and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him, however, I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as misquoted by David Barton, in "The Dream of Dr. Benjamin Rush & God's Hand in Reconciling John Adams and Thomas Jefferson" in WallBuilders (June 2008) http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=10152; omitting many words, giving a very misleading impression that Adams (who did not believe in the Christian Trinity) is endorsing the viewpoint that a government must be administered by the Holy Ghost to be legitimate. Barton went on to use another version, substituting some of Adams' words with false ones:
Misattributed

Marriage , Age , Color , History

“It is a dreadful picture—this picture of Italy under the rule of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and painfully this contrast was felt on both sides—the giddier the height to which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned—the more frequently, amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard, were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds were externally divided, the more completely they coincided in the like annihilation of family life—which is yet the germ and core of all nationality—in the like laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a— hypocritically whitewashed—moral and political corruption of the nation. All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again similar fruits to reap.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Italy under the Oligarchy
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life , God , War , World

“Good morning everyone. This past week we've seen the best and the worst of humanity. The heinous terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, in Iraq and Nigeria. They showed us once again the depths of the terrorist's depravity. And at the same time we saw the world come together in solidarity. Parisians opening their doors to anyone trapped in the street, taxi drivers turning off their meters to get people home safety, people lining up to donate blood. These simple human acts are a powerful reminder that we cannot be broken and in the face of terror we stand as one. In the wake of these terrible events, I understand the anxiety that many Americans feel. I really do. I don't dismiss the fear of a terrorist bomb going off. There's nothing President Obama and I take more seriously though, than keeping the American people safe. In the past few weeks though, we've heard an awful lot of people suggest that the best way to keep America safe is to prevent any Syrian refugee from gaining asylum in the United States. So let's set the record straight how it works for a refugee to get asylum. Refugees face the most rigorous screening of anyone who comes to the United States. First they are finger printed, then they undergo a thorough background check, then they are interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security. And after that the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Defense and the Department of State, they all have to sign off on access. And to address the specific terrorism concerns we are talking about now, we've instituted another layer of checks just for Syrian refugees. There is no possibility of being overwhelmed by a flood of refugees landing on our doorstep tomorrow. Right now, refugees wait 18 to 24 months while the screening process is completed. And unlike in Europe, refugees don't set foot in the United States until they are thoroughly vetted. Let's also remember who the vast majority of these refugees are: women, children, orphans, survivors of torture, people desperately in need medical help. To turn them away and say there is no way you can ever get here would play right into the terrorists' hands. We know what ISIL - we know what they hope to accomplish. They flat-out told us. Earlier this year, the top ISIL leader al-Baghdadi revealed the true goal of their attacks. Here's what he said: "Compel the crusaders to actively destroy the gray zone themselves. Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one and two choices. Either apostatize or emigrate to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution." So it's clear. It's clear what ISIL wants. They want to manufacture a clash between civilizations. They want frightened people to think in terms of "us versus them."They want us to turn our backs on Muslims victimized by terrorism. But this gang of thugs peddling a warped ideology, they will never prevail. The world is united in our resolve to end their evil. And the only thing ISIL can do is spread terror in hopes that we will in turn, turn on ourselves. We will betray our ideals and take actions, actions motivated by fear that will drive more recruits into the arms of ISIL. That's how they win. We win by prioritizing our security as we've been doing. Refusing to compromise our fundamental American values: freedom, openness, tolerance. That's who we are. That's how we win. May God continue to bless the United States of America and God bless our troops.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Weekly presidential address http://www.c-span.org/video/?401096-1/weekly-presidential-address (21 November 2015).
2010s

Women , God , Children , People

“Judaism was a divinely appointed type of the Millennial Kingdom of Christ which will control and regulate all matters; hence Judaism was properly a union of church and state - of religious and civil government. But, as we have already shown, the Gospel Church was in no sense to be associated in, or to have anything to do with, the government of the world, until her Lord, the King of Kings, comes, assumes control, and exalts her as his bride to share in that reign of righteousness. Neglecting the Lord's words, and following human wisdom, theories and plans, the great system called Christendom, embracing all governments and creeds professing to be Christ's (but a miserable counterfeit of the true Kingdom of Christ), was organized before the time, without the Lord, and of wholly unfit elements. The fall of Babylon as an unfit church-state system, and the gathering out of the worthy wheat, therefore, can be and is well illustrated by the fall of Judaism.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 153.

Wisdom , World , Sense , Time

“Verily, civilized patriots strain gnats and swallow camels!”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Must We Go to War? (1937)

“We are not for Assad, neither for his opponents, We want to achieve the situation where the violence ends and there won’t be large-scale civil war. How many of peaceful people were killed by so-called militants? Did you count? There are also hundreds of victims. What is happening in Libya, in Iraq? Did they become safer? Where are they heading? Nobody has an answer.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Regarding a statement by Francois Hollande of "the need for Assad to leave". (June 1, 2012) http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-01/hollande-clashes-with-putin-over-ouster-of-syria-s-assad
2011 - 2015

War , People , Peace

“The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

See the Positive Atheism http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jeffphony.htm site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It actually contains some known phrases of Jefferson's, but they are compounded with almost certainly false statements into a highly misrepresentative whole. Jefferson's own opinions on Jesus, God, Christianity and general opinions about them were far more complex than is indicated in this statement.
Misattributed

God , People , Fools , Rage

“The preposterous distinction of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station, and when the duties are not fulfilled, the affections cannot gain sufficient strength to fortify the virtue of which they are the natural reward. Still there are some loop-holes out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for himself; but for a woman it is an herculean task, because she has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, which require almost super-human powers.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 9

Life , People , World , Sex

“As for “Grass Mud Horse”, I applaud the one who invented such a pun. Its underlining tone is: I know you do not allow me to say certain things. See, I am completely cooperative, right? Of course I think it inappropriate to utter these obscene words. I need not to demean myself below some level because of you. Even if you force me to say those words, I won’t comply. I want to keep my decency and dignity. Even if you retreat to a barbarian level, I am going to keep my identity as a civilized person. You gonna tell me I can’t do that? So, I say “Grass Mud Horse”, not fxxx your mom. What is “Grass Mud Horse”? It always works hard in harsh conditions. See, it is from the vast grassland. I like it. I love it. This whole thing is too far away from you, out of your jurisdiction. Oh well, why are you always staring at me? Am I not perfectly fine? I am innocent. I have not been snatched away by some crooked folks. I have not been put under their control. And I am not vulgar. Why do you have to worry so much about me?
I am singing a cute children’s song – I AM A GRASS MUD HORSE! Even though it is heard by the entire world, you can’t say I’ve broken the law.”

Cui Weiping (1956) Chinese film critic

"Cui Weiping (崔卫平): I Am a Grass-Mud Horse" in China Digital Times (1 March 2009) http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/03/cui-weiping-%E5%B4%94%E5%8D%AB%E5%B9%B3-i-am-a-grass-mud-horse/

Love , Children , World , Law

“I hope i shall never hav so much reputashun that i shan't feel obliged to be alwus civil.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Source: Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Hope , Feeling

“Nature has time without limit, but man has immediate need for better and still better food, houses and clothing, and our present state of civilization depends largely upon the improvements of plants and animals which have consciously and half-consciously been made by man, and future civilization must more and more depend upon scientific efforts to this end.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 1 Plant Breeding

Food , Nature , Effort , Time

“What kind of story am I going to give them next? Because that's what we are to other people, boy, we are their gossip. That's all civilization is, a giant mill grinding out gossip. And so I could be the story of the man who rode high and fell hard, and had his spirit broken and crawled off into a hole like a dog, to die as soon as he could manage it. Or I could be the story of a man who rode high and fell hard, and then got up defiant, and walked away in a new direction.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 4: "The Alchemist", § 11
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

People , Dogs , Boy

“Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind. Your animal fellow beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds. This one noble park is big enough and rich enough for a whole life of study and aesthetic enjoyment. It is good for everybody, no matter how benumbed with care, encrusted with a mail of business habits like a tree with bark. None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

1895, page 350
John of the Mountains, 1938

Life , Peace , Beauty , Mountain

“Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. challenged the underlying premise of prevailing Civil War scholarship. The South, he pointed out, had shown no evidence of a willingness to end slavery; indeed, over time it had become ever more hysterical in its defense. With one eye firmly on the recent past, Schlesinger insisted that a society closed in support of evil could not be appeased, and if it was worth a war to destroy Nazism, surely it was worth one to eradicate slavery. But not until the 1960s, under the impact of the civil rights revolution, did historians en masse repudiate a half-century of Civil War scholarship, concluding that the war resulted from an irreconcilable conflict between two fundamentally different societies, one resting on slavery, the other on free labor. Historians pushed Emancipation to the center of their account of the Civil War, and it has remained there ever since.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

"The Civil War in 'Postracial' America" https://web.archive.org/web/20111001073757/http://ericfoner.com/articles/101011nation.html (10 October 2011), The Nation
2010s

War , Support , Evil , Time

“I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 29. (Rica writing to Ibben)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

War , Christ

“The first thing you’ve got to do is study and understand what we’re up against. You must realize that this is not a religion that you’re fighting against. You’re fighting against a theo-political belief system and construct. You’re fighting against something that’s been doing this thing since 622 AD - 7th century - 1,388 years. You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at LePonto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? You want to ask the Christian – I mean the Germanic and Austrian – knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened at Constantinople and why today it’s called Istanbul? Because they lost that fight in 1453. You need to get into the Qur'an, you need to understand their precepts, you need to read the Sunnah, you need to read the Hadith and then you can really understand this is not a perversion: They are doing exactly what this book says. I want to close by saying this, and I think we’ve said this all through this morning so far: Until we get principled leadership in the United States that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is and then understand their goals and objectives - which is on any jihadist website - and then come up with the right and proper goals and objectives to not only secure our republic, but to secure western civilization.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

Response to question: Why would [Islamist terrorists] warp a religion to justify attacking the United States. [Hudson Institute, Reclaim American Liberty Conference, January 13, 2010, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=hudson_upcoming_events&id=741, March 22, 2011]
2010s

People , Books , Religion , Understanding

“It is a real tragedy for a nation when three groups of its people, namely politicians, religionists and civil society workers, just pretend to be generous.”

Khem Veasna (1971) Cambodian politician

Quoted on his facebook profile (4 March 2014)

People

“In my judgment, the slogan "black power" and what has been associated with it has set the civil rights movement back considerably in the United States over the period of the last several months.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Remark during testimony of Floyd McKissick before a Senate subcommittee of which Kennedy was a member (December 8, 1966); reported in Federal Role in Urban Affairs, hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 89th Congress, 2d session, part 11, p. 2312 (1967)

“…Well! Glad you're being so polite about this. You're very civil—oh my god! I didn't blo[ck]… I didn't mean to look down! Ugh! They're naked! They are sooo naked! Oh my god!”

Markiplier (1989) American YouTuber and Internet personality

Video game commentary, Outlast (September 4~8, 2013)
Source: Outlast Part 3, Markiplier, wikipedia:Markiplier, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY1NtCffOGk,

God

“[I]f we lose our chance now…that chance will not return either to us or to our children. The memories of the last War will grow dim. The world will get back into the old rut, familiar professions and piety about peace will again soothe us to sleep, and the various countries will once more base their security upon military preparation. So they will all, in the end, find themselves drifting hopelessly upon those currents that make for war. … And remember what the next war will be like. The old lines which divide combatants from non-combatants, the weak and the diseased from the strong and the robust, men from women and children, will all be obliterated and civilization itself assailed, and from sea and sky will be brought to a heap of ruins.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester (24 May 1929), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 487
1920s

Women , Men , War , Children

“If you read Peter Farb's book, Man's Rise of Civilization, he goes through all these different cultures at first contact, and they very often figure out in very different ways, but typically the things that were in common among them, were that the idea of the accumulation of private property beyond your needs was considered a mental illness.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Thom Hartmann, in the documentary film "I Am" written, directed, and narrated by Tom Shadyac
Disputed

Books , Way , Idea , Reading

“We threaten to rain fire upon North Korea and Iran, yet we quail before an elderly, impoverished and decrepit Russia. How diminished we are as a civilization.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Russian aggression (2018)

“One of the most serious obstacles to happiness is the awkwardness of modern man, with his mind full of doctrines and abstract formulas, when he attempts to re-establish contact with real emotions. Animals and unsophisticated people achieve happiness more naturally, because their desires are simpler and truer. Civilized man, a parrot enslaved by his chattering, ceaselessly inoculates himself with loves and hatreds which he does not actually fee.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Love , People , Nature , Animals

“1905
Tsar Nicholas II made inept efforts to mollify his angry people by granting basic liberties and allowing a parliament (Duma), which he kept dissolving. Meanwhile he ruthlessly suppressed the people’s rising. Royal troops fired ona peaceful march of workers in St. Petersburg on January 9, known as Bloody Sunday. Anti-Jewish pogroms were rampant. The Russian edition, published by Dr. Nilus, of the “Protocols of Zion” was widely circulated. Monarchists frequently read it aloud to illiterate peasants.
1914
The start of World War I led to Russian military defeats. A failing economy brought about terrible civilian suffering. Loyalists openly spoke about a “Jewish plot”.
Food riots, strikes, and the tsar’s panicky dissolution of the Fourth Duma exploded into revolution. By November, the Bolsheviks (the revolutionary faction of the former Social Democratic workers’ party) had seized control of the government. Royalist Russians began a civil warand were defeated. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and was executed, along with his family, by Bolsheviks in 1918.
Russian aristocrats fled Russia and dispersed throughout Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East. There they settled as expatriates. Most had little work experience. In order to earn money, they frequently sold valuables. Some of these items provided information on the Russian use of anti-Semitic literature.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Money , War , People , World

“The intimate coupling of two men or two women is not marriage. It is a pale and misshapen counterfeit that will only serve to empty marriage of its meaning and destroy the institution that is the keystone in the arch of civilization … Marriage is the sine qua non for healthy children and a stable society. It is 'fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race'…”

James Kennedy (televangelist) (1930–2007) American evangelist

Kennedy Calls for Constitutional "Firewall" to Protect Marriage http://www.reclaimamerica.org/PAGES/News/news.aspx?story=1460 Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, November 19, 2003

Women , Men , Marriage , Children

“The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased, negative review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble, that they swiftly select one of the recommended names…
You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses: and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other’s books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like…. Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink….
So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other’s books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles – and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Books , Feeling , Decision , Effort

“We remember the refrain from the Phillippines: ‘Underneath the starry flag/Civilize him with a Krag /And then get underway for home sweet home.’ But you have to civilize him first, and how you do that with the ragheads is the problem.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

Cooper in Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries October 2003, Vol. 11, No. 12.

Home , Problem

“The world's present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.The first of these two systems has been responsible for the spectacular rise, principally during the last two centuries, of the present industrial system and is essential for its continuance. The second, an inheritance from the prescientific past, operates by rules of its own having little in common with those of the matter-energy system. Nevertheless, the monetary system, by means of a loose coupling, exercises a general control over the matter-energy system upon which it is superimposed.Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the last two centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common, namely exponential growth, which has made a reasonably stable coexistence possible. But, for various reasons, it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest.”

M. King Hubbert (1903–1989) American geoscientist

"Two Intellectual Systems: Matter-energy and the Monetary Culture." Summary, by M. King Hubbert, of a seminar he taught at MIT Energy Laboratory, 30 September 1981, recovered from http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/monetary.htm

World , Exercises , Knowledge , Universe

“Upon this Occasion many Methods have been invented of secret Writing, or Writing in Cipher, a Thing heretofore scarce known to any but the Secretaries of Princes, or others of like Condition; but of late Years, during our Commotions and civill Wars in England, grown very common and familiar, so that now there is scarce a Person of Quality, but is more or lesse acquainted with it, and doth as there is Occasion, make use of it.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering (1737)

War , Secret , Personality

“A civilization is complicated, in the first place, because it is dynamic; that is, it is constantly changing in the passage of time, until it has perished.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 4, Historical Analysis, p. 85

Change , Time

“You must remember what the concert of Europe is. The concert, or, as I prefer to call it, the inchoate federation of Europe, is a body which acts only when it is unanimous…remember this—that this federation of Europe is the embryo of the only possible structure of Europe which can save civilization from the desolating effects of a disastrous war. (Cheers.) You notice that on all sides the instruments of destruction, the piling up of arms, are becoming larger and larger. The powers of concentration are becoming greater, the instruments of death more active and more numerous, and are improved with every year; and each nation is bound, for its own safety's sake, to take part in this competition. These are the things which are done, so to speak, on the side of war. The one hope that we have to prevent this competition from ending in a terrible effort of mutual destruction which will be fatal to Christian civilization—the one hope we have is that the Powers may gradually be brought together, to act together in a friendly spirit on all questions of difference which may arise, until at last they shall be welded in some international constitution which shall give to the world, as a result of their great strength, a long spell of unfettered and prosperous trade and continued peace.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech at the Guildhall (9 November 1897), quoted in The Times (10 November 1897), p. 6
1890s

Death , War , World , Peace

“A young man who had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven" had been put out of the way; and I can imagine that believer in material power murmuring as he went homeward, "it will all blow over now." Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Economics of Ireland and the Policy of the British Government (1921)

World , Way , Imagination

“Complex civilization is hectic… such hunters and collectors of wild food as the Shoshone are among the most leisured people on earth.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

p, 125
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

People , Food

“There will be no room, here, for the smug myopia which views American civilization as the final solution to all world problems; which recommends our institutions for universal adoption and turns away with contempt from the serious study of the institutions of peoples whose civilizations may seem to us to be materially less advanced.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

As quoted in Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (1989) by Anders Stephanson, p. 160

People , World , Problem , Study

“Smith certainly thought he was reflecting on general human experience, and his evidence was not limited to his own society. He had a fairly wide knowledge of history, including the history of ancient Greece and Rome, and he took a keen interest in such anthropological reports as were available, notably reports about the indigenous inhabitants of North America. He knew that the behaviour and the ethics of the American Indians differed markedly in some respects from what was found in Europe, and he knew, too, that the ethics of ancient Graeco-Roman civilization differed, in other respects, from the ethics of Christianity. He was also aware of minor differences in the mores of at least some European societies”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

France and Italy as compared with Britain and with each other
The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (2007), Ch. 1: Two Versions

History , Knowledge

“Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

Tench Coxe (1755–1824) American economist

"Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution," under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789, p. 2 col. 1. As quoted in the Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789, A friend of James Madison, writing in support of the Madison's first draft of the Bill of Rights.

People , Country

“It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it—in other words, by becoming civilized—that men become fully human.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Sex and the Shakespeare Reader http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_4_oh_to_be.html (Autumn 2003).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Men , Learning

“The Diary of Vaslav Nijinjsky reaches a limit of sincerity beyond any of the documents that we have referred to on this study. There are other modern works that express the same sense that civilized life is a form of living death; notably the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the novels of Franz Kafka; but there is an element of prophetic denunciation in both, the attitude of healthy men rebuking their sick neighbors. We possess no other record of the Outsider's problems that was written by a man about to be defeated and permanently smashed by those problems.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 115

Life , Death , Men , Problem

“Some people say we are on the verge of the Second Civil War. And it may be so. But even on the darkest days, cheerfulness kept breaking in. I am not by nature a 'Whither America?”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

man.
June 1968) In: Talk About America (1968

War , People , Nature

“You don't wage civil war in kid gloves. The Spanish bishops know it so well that they have been obliged to refer to 'regrettable excesses' and 'inevitable abuses'. They seem to think that war is like Shrove Tuesday, that it's a jolly respite, as it were, from social morality, and that men can give themselves up to being cruel just as gay sparks at carnival-time indulge in bottom-pinching! Once the illuminations go out, we must welcome the dear lad home with a smile that's both knowing and fatherly. 'Don't worry, my dear boy. We can none of us resist a little fun sometimes. Think no more about it.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

But, Your Excellencies, this is something more than a little fun!
Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.147

Men , War , Smile , Home

“The great problem of our civilization is still unsolved. We have to account for and grapple with the mass of misery and destitution in our midst, co-existent as it is with the evidence of abundant wealth and teeming prosperity. It is a problem which some men would put aside by reference to the eternal laws of supply and demand, to the necessity of freedom of contract, and to the sanctity of every private right of property…Our object is the elevation of the poor, of the masses of the people—a levelling up of them by which we shall do something to remove the excessive inequality in social life.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech on 8 September, 1885.
1880s

Life , Men , People , Law

“The civil war in Rwanda and other ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 7, Economic Genocide in Rwanda, p. 120

War , Parting

“Harriet lived in Connecticut and influenced antislavery in her book "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Harriet was a optimist who expressed her feelings by writing. Harriet was listed as one of the people who started the civil war. She started it from one of her books (It was the most influencial book in all of American History) However, Harriet was a very successful person and never stood down.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Little Foxes (1865)

War , People , Books , Feeling

“Nearly seven months have passed since the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. That tragic incident provoked widespread demonstrations and stirred strong emotions from those in the Ferguson area and around our nation. It also prompted a federal investigation by the U. S. Department of Justice, with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division, the U. S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Missouri and the FBI seeking to determine whether this shooting violated federal civil rights law.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Death , Justice , Law , Strong

“Some of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared.”

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England

As quoted in Morning of the Magicians (1963) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Berger, p. 181

Universe , Chance

“The paradox of calling the same human beings persons and property brings the cause of the Civil War into the sharpest focus. A person by definition is a being possessed of a rational will. A chattel by equal definition is a piece of movable property without a rational will. Because a horse or a dog lacks a rational will, its owner is responsible for any damage or injury it may cause. But slaves were held as responsible for their own actions, as were their masters, under the criminal codes of the slave states. The slave owners, in seeking to have the slaves counted as five-fifths, were asserting that they were full human beings. At the same time, by claiming the right to their labor as chattels, they were asserting them to be sub-human. How the slaves could be both was something that Jefferson Davis and his friends never explained.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

Source: 2000s, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), p. 212

War , Dogs , Time , Horse

“I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

The Education of Women (1719)

Women , World , Education , Sex

“[O]ne reason there is no socialism in America is because of Lincoln. In the American context Lincoln imparted to liberal democracy a sense of nobility and purpose that it has not always had in other contexts. He makes democracy something transcendent, and especially at Gettysburg where he talks about the nation having this new birth of freedom. He ratchets the horizons of liberal democracy right up past the spires of Cologne Cathedral and he makes it this glowing attractive ideal that people are willing to make these tremendous sacrifices to protect. Because at the end of the day this is what the Civil War is about—it’s about the preservation of liberal democracy. In the 1860s the United States was the last Enlightenment experiment that was still standing. What you had in the climate of mid-19th century Europe was the renaissance of romantic aristocracy.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Tom Mackaman (2013)

War , People , Democracy , Birth

“The institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything… it amounts to… a gross violation of human liberty.”

Tibor R. Machan (1939–2016) Hungarian-American philosopher

“What's Wrong with Taxation?” Mises Daily, Nov. 22, 2002 https://mises.org/library/whats-wrong-taxation

“If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 2, p. 8
Leviathan (1651)

Men , People , Fear , Dreams

“The sentiment that brings us here today is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the republic lives.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Men , Beauty , Art , Flowers

“We are testing popular government's capacity for self-defense. We are resolved to liberate the soul of American life and prove ourselves an American people in fact, spirit, and purpose, and consecrate ourselves anew and everlastingly to human freedom and humanity's justice. Realizing our new relationship with the world, we want to make it fit to live in, and with might and fright and wrathfulness and barbarity crushed by the conscience of a real civilization. Ours is a small concern about the kind of government any people may choose, but we do mean to outlaw the nation which violates the sacred compacts of international relationships. The decision is to be final.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1910s, The Republic Must Awaken (1917)

Life , People , World , Justice

“Public administration as an American profession originated in the early twentieth century with urban reformers advocating the application of scientific and business practices to rehabilitate corrupt city governments. That approach transformed governance in the United States but also guaranteed recurrent debate over the proper role of public administrators, who must balance the often contradictory demands of efficiency and politically defined notions of the public good. Currently the business approach holds sway. Legitimated by Al Gore's National Performance Review, the New Public Management movement promotes entrepreneurs over civil servants, performance over process, decentralization over centralization, and flexibility over rules. John Rohr demurs, arguing that the movement goes too far in downplaying the distinctively American challenges arising from the separated powers principle. Consequently, the NPM alienates public management from its natural home -- a nation-state established within a constitutional order.”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

Abstract
Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002

Home , Business , Nature

“Negroes in the United States read the history of labor and find it mirrors their own experience. We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us. They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize, so that we may guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted. They are shocked that action organizations, sit-ins, civil disobedience and protests are becoming our everyday tools, just as strikes, demonstrations and union organization became yours to insure that bargaining power genuinely existed on both sides of the table.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to AFL–CIO (1961)

History , Understanding , Reading

“Now of course, the idealistic slogans are still needed for the media, for a lot of scholarship, for the schools, and so on. But, where the serious people are, the problem is that we have to maintain this disparity, and obviously it's gotta be maintained by force. So none of the idealistic slogans at home. So when you're setting up death squads in El Salvador under the Alliance for Progress, you're not hampered by these idealistic slogans. That's for the masses, for us. Well, given this kind of thinking, it's not too surprising that President Kennedy should say, with regard to El Salvador after supporting a military coup there, that "Governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing communist penetration in Latin America." This at the time when he organized the basic framework for the death squads that have been torturing and murdering ever since, and which we attribute to some kind of extreme right-wingers who somehow we can't get under control.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Reflecting on George Kennan's Memo PPS23.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Talk at University of California, Berkeley, 1984

Death , People , School , Home

“In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found, too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquillity was to be found there. I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence: the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving for sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 22.

Life , Pleasure , Sleep , Freedom

“Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to be used in speaking about the differences of human opinion about divine matters…There has now for divers years a design been carried on, to change the lawful government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant religion into downright Popery…If under his present Majesty we have as yet seen no more visible effects of the same spirit than the firing of London…it is not to be attributed to the good nature or better principles of that sect, but to the wisdom of his Holiness, who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special mark of his indignation, but that we may be made better use of to the wrecking of those that are of our religion, and that if he do not disturb us, there are those amongst ourselves that are leading us into a fair way of reconciliation with him.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England [1677] (reprinted in State Tracts: Volume I (1692), pp. 69 ff.).

Wisdom , Religion , Law , Way

“We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Statement on minimum wage legislation (18 March 1966) http://www.aft.org/yourwork/tools4teachers/bhm/mlktalks.cfm, as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

“[T]he real issue of the Civil War was a terrible ideological derangement that had lifted an entire portion of the American Republic away from the ideological moorings of the founders…”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Bullwhip Feudalism (2018)

War

“Direct and unconcealed brute force and violence—although clearly persisting in many quarters of society—are today less acceptable to an increasingly sophisticated public, a public significantly remote from the methods of social and economic control common to early America. This is not a statement, however, that there is such increased civility that Americans can no longer tolerate social control of the country's under classes by force of violence; rather, it is an observation that Americans today appear to be more inclined to issue endorsement to agents and agencies of control which carry out the task, while permitting the benefactors of such control to retain a semidignified, clean-hands image of themselves.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America (June 1980)

Appearance , Country

“On young love* "Here is a fulfillment of long centuries of civilization and culture; here, in romantic love, more than the triumph of thought or the victories of power is the topmost reach of human beings."”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), p.g. 8

Love , Victory

“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Greeting to the American Committee for Protection of Foreign-born (9 January 1940); later inscribed on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.
1940s

“With two civil wars, an al-Qaida presence and 40% unemployment, what else is President Saleh waiting for? He should leave office now…This revolution is inevitable, the people have endured dictatorship, corruption, poverty and unemployment for years and now the whole thing is exploding”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Tawakul Karman, Yemeni activist, and thorn in the side of Saleh (2011)

War , People , Waiting

“The first grand design of Christ Jesus is to destroy and consume His mortal enemy antichrist. This must be done by the breath of His mouth in His prophets and witnesses. Now, the nations of the world have impiously stopped this heavenly breath and stifled the Lord Jesus in His servants. Now, it shall please the civil state to remove the state bars set up to resist the holy spirit of God in His servants (whom yet finally to resist is not in all the powers of the world), I humbly conceive that the civil state has made a fair progress in promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Roger Williams (theologian) (1603–1684) English Protestant theologian and founder of the colony of Providence Plantation

The Hireling Ministry, None of Christ's (1652)

God , World , Christ

“The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in His truth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost … There is no authority civil or religious: There can be no legitimate government but what is administered by the Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words damnation.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as misquoted by David Barton on Glenn Beck (Fox News) on , shown in the film The Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers (2010), at 2:21:32. Without the ellipses and substituted words, this section of Adams's letter of (21 December 1809) http://books.google.com/books?id=84oTAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA248 reads:
But my Friend there is something very serious in this Business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a Baptism, not a Marriage not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishops on the heads of Candidates for the Ministry. In the same manner as the holy Ghost is transmitted from Monarch to Monarch by the holy oil in the vial at Rheims which was brought down from Heaven by a Dove and by that other Phyal which I have seen in the Tower of London. There is no Authority civil or religious: there can be no legitimate Government but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All, without it is Rebellion and Perdition, or in more orthodox words Damnation. Although this is all Artifice and Cunning in the secret original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lay down their Lives under the Ax or the fiery Fagot for it. Alas the poor weak ignorant Dupe human Nature. There is so much King Craft, Priest Craft, Gentlemens Craft, Peoples Craft, Doctors Craft, Lawyers Craft, Merchants Craft, Tradesmens Craft, Labourers Craft and Devils Craft in the world, that it seems a desperate and impracticable Project to undeceive it.
Do you wonder that Voltaire and Paine have made Proselytes? Yet there was as much subtlety, Craft and Hypocrisy in Voltaire and Paine and more too than in Ignatius Loyola.
This Letter is so much in the tone of my Friend the Abby Raynal and the Grumblers of the last age, that I pray you to burn it. I cannot copy it.
Your Prophecy my dear Friend has not become History as yet. I have no Resentment or Animosity against the Gentleman and abhor the Idea of blackening his Character or transmitting him in odious Colours to Posterity.
But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many Correspondences. If I should receive a Letter from him however I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.
Misattributed

Marriage , Truth

“All things in Naples are arranged with as much civility as possible.”

Norman Lewis book Naples '44

Naples '44

“There can be no doubt that the modem environment is changing faster than any environment ever previously changed; therefore, the social center of gravity constantly tends to shift more rapidly; and therefore modem civilization has unprecedented need of the administrative or generalizing mind. I take it to be an axiom, that perfection in administration must be commensurate to the bulk and momentum of the mass to be administered, otherwise the centrifugal will overcome the centripetal force, and the mass will disintegrate. In other words, civilization will dissolve. A moment arrives when the minds of any given dominant type fail to meet the demands made upon them, and are superseded by a younger type, which in tum is set aside by another still younger, until the limit of the administrative genius of that particular race has been reached. Then disintegration sets in, the social momentum is gradually relaxed, and society sinks back to a level at which it can cohere.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

Source: The Theory of Social Revolutions,, p. 204-5, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 9-10

Change , Perfection

“Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and murderers, have first been torturers of animals. The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization. The Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination; we Germans, not half well enough. Buddhism has done more in this direction than Christianity, and Schopenhauer more than all ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with sentient Nature which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer, is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual, yet often unhealthy and unprofitable philosophy.”

David Strauss (1808–1874) German theologian

The Old Faith and the New (Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1872, translated from the 6th edition by M. Blind, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), vol. II, part IV, ch. 71, pp. 59 https://archive.org/stream/oldfaithnewconfe01stra#page/59/mode/2up-60.

Men , History , Nature , Animals

“To the mind of superficial men the future of different races has already brought disaster and ruin upon the country. The poor negro has been charged with all our woes. In the haste of these men they forget that our trouble was not ethnological, but moral, that it was not difference of complexion, but difference of conviction. It was not the Ethiopian as a man, but the Ethiopian as a slave and a coveted article of merchandise, that gave us trouble. I close these remarks as I began. If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice, liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately portray the greatness and grandeur of the future of the republic. We shall spread the network of our science and our civilization over all who seek their shelter, whether from Asia, Africa, or the isles of the sea. We shall mold them all, each after his kind, into Americans. Indian and Celt, Negro and Saxon, Latin and Teuton, Mongolian and Caucasian, Jew and gentile, all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , Justice , Law , Support

“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representatives of the King-Emperor. Such a spectacle can only increase the unrest in India and the danger to which white people there are exposed. It can only encourage all the forces which are hostile to British authority.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Council of the West Essex Conservative Association (23 February 1931) on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 390
The 1930s

Hostility , People

“While pretending to liberate mankind from the alleged oppression of capitalism Marxist Man has defied the warm, white light of Twentieth Century civilization to introduce slavery on a scale unprecedented in the history of the race. While claiming to foster the "rights of the common man" the Marxist has butchered his fellow citizens from Kulaks to aristocrats in numbers that baffle rational comprehension. And while describing himself as the epitome of the best in nature - the creature of science, the supreme intelligence of the universe -Homo-Marxian has exploited his cunning to compound crimes which scarcely would be duplicated by the most predatory tribes of pre-historic times.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

History , Intelligence , Nature , Light

“I know more than one young man in past years who worked for the ticket and was just overflowin’ with patriotism, but when he was knocked out by the civil service humbug he got to hate his country and became an Anarchist. p. 11”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 3, The Curse of Civil Service Reform

Hate , Past , Country

“Besides, I like epitaphs. Among civilized people they're an expression of that pious and secret selfishness that induces us to pull out of death a shred at least of the shade that has passed on.”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

Gosto dos epitáfios; eles são, entre a gente civilizada, uma expressão daquele pio e secreto egoísmo que induz o homem a arrancar à morte um farrapo ao menos da sombra que passou.
Source: As Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881), Ch. 151, p. 196.

Death , People , Secret , Selfishness

“Anyone who has read my book BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence (1997) will be surprised to see me described as an “advocate of the Sangh Parivar”. I suppose that in a world of partisan scholarship, where the party-line is scrupulously followed by activists and camp-followers alike, any attempt to remain objective must come across as counter-partisan, meaning partisan activism for the opposite side…. Hindutva is a fairly crude ideology, borrowing heavily from European nationalisms with their emphasis on homogeneity. Under the conditions of British colonialism, it was inevitable that some such form of Hindu nationalism would arise, but I believe better alternatives have seen the light, more attuned to the genius of Hindu civilization.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, The Problem with Secularism (2007)

Books , World , Light , Reading

“In every age there is a turning point, a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world. It is frozen in the statues of Easter Island that put a stop to time—and in the medieval clocks of Europe that once also seemed to say the last word about the heavens for ever. Each culture tries to fix its visionary moment, when it was transformed by a new conception either of nature or of man. But in retrospect, what commands our attention as much are the continuities—the thoughts that run or recur from one civilization to another.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Source: The Ascent of Man (1973), Ch. 1 Lower than the Angels.

Age , World , Way , Nature

“We need to intensify cooperation with civilized governments all over the world to combat the common threat of terrorism.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, IPI speech (2000)

World

“I wanted to create an interesting scifi universe that didn’t violate the laws of physics, and that means that you’re limited to staying inside the solar system. I also wanted to get away from the ship-centric style of science fiction. Star Trek is ship-centric and it’s all about the Enterprise — there are many other examples. What if we decided to get away from the obsession with ships and instead thought about big machines and structures that might be used to create a civilization inside the solar system?”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

About Seveneves, "Here's How Space Megastructures Will Look, According to Neal Stephenson" in Gizmodo, interviewed by Annalee Newitz, May 20, 2015 (pre-Zero)

Law , Star , Universe , Science

“If we were to ask which country is the most corrupt in the world, the first answer to come to mind would be dictated by the perceived level of corruption. Perhaps one might think of Mexico, of South American countries, of African countries, of the Middle East or Italy. But the most corrupt is the UK. It’s not a type of a corruption that concerns civil servants, policemen or mayors; it’s a type of a corruption that is consubstantial to economic system. The British economic system feeds itself on corruption. And in the midst of this, the British government and its citizens have not woken up to the plight that their country is going through. A plight greater than earthquakes, greater than terror attacks.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

World , Thinking , Country

“In our United Kingdom, the main terrorist threat has come from the IRA. Their minds twisted by hatred and fanaticism, they have tried to bomb and murder their way to their objective of tearing more than a million citizens out of the United Kingdom. The truth is that the whole IRA campaign is based on crushing democracy and smashing anyone who doesn't agree with them. To all those who have suffered so much at their hands—to the Northern Ireland policemen and prison officers and their families, to the soldiers, the judges, the civil servants and their families—we offer our deepest admiration and thanks for defending democracy and for facing danger while keeping within the rule of law—unlike the terrorist who skulks in the shadows and shoots to kill…we will never give up the search for more effective ways of defeating the IRA. If the IRA think they can weary us or frighten us, they have made a terrible miscalculation. People sometimes say that it is wrong to use the word never in politics, I disagree, some things are of such fundamental importance that no other word is appropriate. So I say once again today that this Government will never surrender to the IRA. Never.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (14 October 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107352
Third term as Prime Minister

People , Truth , Family , Law

“As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism. Another merit in the new flag is, that it bears no resemblance to the now infamous banner of the Yankee vandals.”

William Tappan Thompson (1812–1882) American humorist

Savannah Morning News (4 May 1863); As quoted in History of the Flag of the United States of America (1882), by George Henry Preble, p. 528

“Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. The second was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy. The third was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare. The fourth was the liberal state. Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization.
Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. By the time it failed, most of the other institutions had been sacrificed in a vain effort to save it. But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. It was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 1 : The Hundred Years' Peace

War , World , Way , History

“Our enemies latched unto the word "apartheid" and in a very sly manner transformed it into the strongest weapon in the onslaught against freedom and civilization in our country.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As state president at a parade of the SA Police College, Pretoria, 20 June 1986, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 37

Freedom , Country

“I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, 'Horrible three-way civil war?”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Appalling silence http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2003/20, January 16, 2003. Retrieved February 1, 2007.

God , War , Way , Forgiveness

“Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses … yet we are all children of the same Judaic-Christian civilization, with much the same religious background basically.”

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

As quoted in The Political Thought of Adlai E. Stevenson (1955) by William Robert Latimer, p. 89

Children

“What would Lincoln have been without the Civil War? Just another railroad lawyer!”

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

JFK to Gore Vidal, quoted in David Swanson's Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (2011).
Attributed

War

“In archaic and traditional societies, the surrounding world is conceived as a microcosm. At the limits of this closed world begins the domain of the unknown, of the formless. On this side there is ordered — because of inhabited and organized — space; on the other, outside this familiar space, there is the unknown and dangerous region of the demons, the ghosts, and the dead and foreigners — in a world, chaos or death or night. This image of an inhabited microcosm, surrounded by desert regions as a chaos or a kingdom of the dead, has survived even in highly evolved civilizations such as those of China, Mesopotamia and Egypt.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Images and Symbols (1952)

Death , World , Night , Dead

“From the moment he switches on an early-morning news broadcast until he falls asleep at night over a novel or a magazine, he is, like all other people living in modern civilized conditions, swimming in words. Newspaper editors, politicians, salesmen, disc jockeys, columnists, luncheon club speakers, and clergymen; colleagues at work, friends, relatives, wife and children; market reports, direct-mail advertising, books, and billboards -- all are assailing him with words all day long. […] ”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Niagara of Words, p. 15

Children , People , Books , Night

“Liberalism, which Luxemburg called by its more appropriate name—“opportunism”—is an integral component of capitalism. When the citizens grow restive, it will soften and decry capitalism’s excesses. But capitalism, Luxemburg argued, is an enemy that can never be appeased. Liberal reforms are used to stymie resistance and then later, when things grow quiet, are revoked on the inevitable road to capitalist slavery. The last century of labor struggles in the United States provides a case study for proof of Luxemburg’s observation.The political, cultural and judicial system in a capitalist state is centered around the protection of property rights. And, as Adam Smith pointed out, when civil government “is instituted for the security of property, [it] is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” The capitalist system is gamed from the start. And this makes Luxemburg extremely relevant as corporate capital, now freed from all constraints, reconfigures our global economy, including the United States’, into a ruthless form of neofeudalism.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"Reform or Revolution" (2016)

Game , Reality , Study

“He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights… it had to be some silly little Communist.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

To her mother, Janet Auchincloss (22 November 1963); quoted in The Death of a President (1967) by William Manchester

Quotes about civilization page 17

Quotes about civilization
page 17