Quotes about civilization
page 9

“Now, the issue of the Civil War as Lincoln presented it, in both his inaugural address on March 4th, and in the message to Congress in Special Session on July 4th, four months later, was in essence this. In ratifying the Constitution, each state had committed itself to accepting the results of elections conducted under the rules of the Constitution. The election of 1860 had been conducted under the rules of the Constitution. If there were any violations of those rules, it was by the Southern states in refusing to allow Republican electors on the ballot. But there was nothing that the Republican Party had done. There was nothing in the electoral procedures of the free states, or, for that matter, of the slave states with this exception which justified anyone in saying that the results of this election were not Constitutional results.”

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

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

War

“I think the movement contributed to this nation a sense of universal freedom. Precisely because women saw our movement in the sixties, stimulated them to want their rights. The fact that students saw the movement of the sixties created a student movement in this country. The fact that the people were against the war in Vietnam, saw us go into the street and win, made it possible for them to have the courage to go into the street and win, and the lesson that I would like to see from this is, that we must now find a way to deal with the problem of full employment, and as surely as we were able to bring about the Civil Rights Act, the voter rights act--the Voting Rights Act, I mean the education act, and the housing act, so is it possible for all of us now to combine our forces in a coalition, including Catholic, Protestant, Jew and labor and blacks and Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans and all other minorities, to bring about the one thing that will bring peace internally to the United States. And that is that any man who wants a job, or any woman who wants a job, shall not be left unemployed.”

Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) American civil rights activist and gay rights activist

Eyes on the Prize interview http://digital.wustl.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eop;cc=eop;rgn=main;view=text;idno=rus0015.0145.091, Interview with Bayard Rustin, conducted by Blackside, Inc. in 1979, for Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965). Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection. (1979)

Women, War, People, Education

“It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God. Therefore, everything had to be reassessed because everything had changed. With one stroke, mankind's achievements seemed to have been erased. Was Auschwitz a consequence or an aberration of "civilization"? All we know is that Auschwitz called that civilization into question as it called into question everything that had preceded Auschwitz. Scientific abstraction, social and economic contention, nationalism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, racism, mass hysteria. All found their ultimate expression in Auschwitz.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

God, Question, Change

“How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoe, open their motorcar doors?”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645 1960s

Money, Shoe, Way

“In 2000 Fiji experienced the greatest crisis in its contemporary history … Fiji came close to complete collapse and anarchy; some form of civil war was a real possibility. This would not only have pitted Fijians against Indians but Fijians against Fijians, and Province against Province. But the country did not fall. It stepped back from the brink. It drew on its inner strength and a vein of tolerance and restraint and began the task of remaking Fiji.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

War, History, Country

“We do not ask ourselves what the ultimate ideas behind our civilization are that have brought us into this danger; we do not search for the human face behind the bewildering array of instruments that man has forged; in a word, we do not dare to be philosophical.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter One, The Advent of Existentialism, p. 3

Search, Idea

“As every generation of Americans has believed, the future belongs to the free. In a time of war, we reassert the essential values and beliefs of our country. In the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln pointed toward a new birth of freedom. Leading America into global war, Franklin D. Roosevelt defined the four freedoms: freedom of speech and religion, freedom from fear and want. Whenever America fights for the security of our country, we also fight for the values of our country. In our time, we will defend the land we love and we will act on the ideals that gave it birth.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, Compassionate Conservatism (April 2002)

Love, War, Fear, Religion

“It is in dealing with administration, as I apprehend, that civilizations have usually, though not always, broken down, for it has been on administrative difficulties that revolutions have for the most part supervened. Advances in administration seem to presuppose the evolution of new governing classes, since apparently, no established type of mind can adapt itself to changes in environment even in slow-moving civilizations, as fast as environments change. Administration is the capacity of coordinating many, and often conflicting, social energies in a single organism, so adroitly that they shall operate as a unity. This presupposes the power of recognizing a series of relations between numerous special social interests, with all of which no single man can be intimately acquainted. Probably no very highly specialized class can be strong in this intellectual quality because of the intellectual isolation incident to specialization; and yet administration or generalization is not only the faculty upon which social stability rests, but is possibly the highest faculty of the human mind.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

207-8 , as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 10
The Theory of Social Revolutions,

Strong, Change, Parting

“The recognition, the diagnosis, and the preservation of psychopathic individuals account for the apparent increase of neurotics in civilized communities.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: Nervous Ills their Cause and Cure (1922), p. 275

Communication

“In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Marketplace"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

“I believe that to deal with politics means to take responsibilities and not sit in churches. My political line has been the same for the past thirty years: I advocate urban, civilized and European country in opposition to dictatorship. What makes me different from others is that in Serbia intellectuals are the spectators, making analyses, smoking and grumbling. What I wish is to change the world.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Le Mond, 05.10.2001.

World, Change, Past, Country

“The moment that the topic of the pre-European African past is raised, many individuals are concerned for various reasons to know about the existence of African “civilizations.” Mainly, this stems from a desire to make comparisons with European “civilizations.” This is not the context in which to evaluate the so-called civilizations of Europe. It is enough to note the behavior of European capitalists from the epoch of slavery through colonialism, fascism, and genocidal wars in Asia and Africa. Such barbarism causes suspicion to attach to the use of the word “civilization” to describe Western Europe and North America.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 53.

War, Behavior, Past

“The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

An Almanac of Liberty (1954), p. 238
Other speeches and writings

Men

“Andrew Jackson then is a sturdy obstacle to the Democrats' ongoing and increasingly frenzied campaign to erase from America's history all the unsavory things their party has championed for most of its existence, namely, slavery, secession, civil war, segregation, socialism, and, most recently the slaughter of infants. And so their longtime hero Andrew Jackson has been, as Sam Spade once said, chosen to take the fall alongside the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia to help erase the Democrats' consistently reprehensible behavior and policies from the history books. But there is a rub. None of the women the Democrats have so far raised as General Jackson's replacement in any way merit representation in the pantheon of patriots, nation-builders, and military leaders that grace the few denominations of our paper currency.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer. 2010s

Women, War, Books, Way

“Is the surface of a planet really the right place for expanding technological civilization?”

Gerard O'Neill (1927–1992) Physicist, author, and inventor

"Is the surface of a planet really the right place for expanding technological civilization?"-Stewart Brand interview July 1975 http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/CoEvolutionBook/Interview.HTML

“One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.”

Henry James book Hawthorne

Hawthorne, ch. II: Early Manhood.

Life, Country

“The Anarchists believe in the State; only they insist that the greater part, if not all, of the necessity for its existence is the result of an artificial limitation of the freedom of civil society, and that the completion of industrial freedom may one day so harmonize individuals that it will no longer be necessary to provide a guarantee of political freedom.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Individual Liberty (1926), Liberty and Politics

Freedom, Parting

“How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

“Russia has always been several centuries behind western civilization. The Church, intrusted with secular power, is joined with the State. It prohibits any change of faith and even possesses the power to deprive a heretic of his property. Moreover, anyone proved to be a heretic or a nonconformist may be sent to a penal colony.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 68

Faith, Change

“The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 845.

People, Education

“Art is the signature of civilizations.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Beverly Sills, interviewed on NBC TV, May 4, 1985.
Misattributed

Art

“This new theory of Dravidian superiority is as unscientific as the theory of Aryan superiority. For, it goes against all the accepted conclusions of historical research, which have conclusively proved the indivisible links between social and family institutions on the one hand and the stage of civilization on the other.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

On the issue of pre-Aryan inferiority or Aryan superiority
EMS as a historian

Family

“Today, our dominant international challenge is to restore the greatness of America, based on telling the truth, a commitment to peace, and respect for civil liberties at home and basic human rights around the world.
Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered and we are left increasingly isolated and vulnerable in a hostile world.
Without truth, without trust, America cannot flourish. Trust is at the very heart of our democracy, the sacred covenant between a president and the people.
When that trust is violated, the bonds that hold our republic together begin to weaken.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Post-Presidency, DNC address (2004)

Hostility, People, Truth, World

“I think all modern cities, especially the crass, newly built, highly industrial ones, should have ghosts. They are a civilizing influence.”

Fritz Leiber book Our Lady of Darkness

Source: Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Chapter 18 (p. 98)

Thinking

“To make you cry I’ll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered "Allah akbar, Allah akbar." Yes, I know: the ancient Romans, those ancient Romans of whom my culture is so proud, entertained themselves in the Coliseum by watching the deaths of Christians fed to the lions. I know, I know: in every country of Europe the Christians, those Christians whose contribution to the History of Thought I recognize despite my atheism, entertained themselves by watching the burning of heretics. But a lot of time has passed since then, we have become a little more civilized, and even the sons of Allah ought to have figured out by now that certain things are just not done. After the twelve impure young men they killed a little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head with their combat boots. And if you don’t believe it, well, reread my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who, horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn’t even what I want to underline. It’s that, at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob, no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All the while thundering Allah–akbar, Allah–akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding carpet of smashed bones.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

Rage and the Pride">

Death, Women, Men, God

“After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of the these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

Art, Parent, Universe

“Among the roles the Budget Bureau (now OMB) was that of constant critic and improver of administration in the federal executive branch. In my day this work had fallen to the products of graduate schools in civil administration. Their ideas…seemed to me theoretical nonsense.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

School, Idea

“You don’t like me saying that, but here’s the truth: luxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one generally doesn’t have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience.”

Ann Leckie book Ancillary Justice

Source: Ancillary Justice (2013), Chapter 4 (p. 63)

Truth

“Eternal vigilance is the condition, not only of liberty, but of everything which as civilized men we hold dear.”

August Heckscher II (1913–1997) American writer

Address, Kenyon College (April 4, 1957)

Men

“About the beginning of our Civil Wars, in the year 1642, a Chaplain of Sr. Will. Waller's (one evening as we were sitting down to Supper at the Lady Vere's in London, with whom I then dwelt,) shewed me an intercepted Letter written in Cipher. He shewed it me as a Curiosity (and it was indeed the first thing I had ever seen written in Cipher.) And asked me between jeast and earnest, whether I could make any thing of it. And he was surprised when I said (upon the first view) perhaps I might, if it proved no more but a new Alphabet. It was about ten a clock when we rose from Supper. I then withdrew to my chamber to consider of it. And by the number of different Characters therein, (not above 22 or 23:) I judged that it could not be more than a new Alphabet, and in about 2 hours time (before I went to bed) I had deciphered it; and I sent a Copy of it (so deciphered) the next morning to him from whom I had it. And this was my first attempt at Deciphering.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

War, Time

“[…] all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Writing for the court, Korematsu v. United States, 33 U.S. 124 (1944).

“Babies who have not yet been taught to speak any language are the only race of the earth, the race of man: all the rest is pretence, what we call civilization, hatred, fear, desire for strength.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Seventy Thousand Assyrians (1934)

Fear, Baby

“I cannot…perceive any ground for hoping that any practical good would, while the funding system exists in its present extent, result from the adoption of any of those projects, which have professed to have in view what is called Parliamentary Reform…when the funding system, from whatever cause, shall cease to operate upon civil and political liberty, there will be no need of projects for parliamentary reform. The parliament will, as far as shall be necessary, then reform itself.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (15 March 1806), quoted in Karl W. Schweizer and John W. Osborne, Cobbett and His Times (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990), p. 11.

Hope

“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions

Life, Men, Pain, Happiness

“The civil state is bound before God to take off that bond and yoke of soul oppression, and to proclaim free and impartial liberty to all the people of the three nations to choose and maintain what worship and ministry their souls and consciences are persuaded of; which act, as it will prove an act of mercy and righteousness to the enslaved nations, so is it of a binding force to engage the whole and every interest and conscience to preserve the common freedom and peace; however, an act most suiting with the piety and Christianity of the Holy Testament of Christ Jesus.”

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, People, Peace, Soul

“A basic change in political ethics is required for the realization of the proposal [The dialog among civilizations].”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

UNESCO 1999
Attributed

Change

“The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! … Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Life, Feeling, Cats, Bird

“Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilisation and christianize Christendom?”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

This has often been quoted with modernized American spelling, rendering it "to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?"
Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 64

“There in an entity that was so evil in supporting slavery, in fighting against civil rights, in fighting against the Christian brother that Martin Luther King, Jr. was, fighting against those who wanted equality that the Constitution guaranteed. We ought to look at those symbols and we ought to look at what they stood for and perhaps ban any political organization from participating in Congress for upholding the abomination that slavery was.”

Louie Gohmert (1953) American politician

Speech to the United States House of Representatives (July 2015)

Support, Evil, Fight

“New diseases like syphilis seemed to call for new and "stronger" medicines; and this became one of the stock arguments for resort to the Paracelsian chemical pharmacopeia and mystical medical philosophy. With every fundamental of medicine thus called into question, the only logical recourse was to observe results of cures administered in accordance with the old Galenic as against the new Paracelsian theories, and then to choose whichever worked better. The swift development of European medical practice to levels of skill exceeding all other civilized traditions resulted.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Disease, Question

“The new vision of man and politics was never taken by its founders to be splendid. Naked man, gripped by fear or industriously laboring to provide the wherewithal for survival, is not an apt subject for poetry. They self-consciously chose low but solid ground. Civil societies dedicated to the end of self-preservation cannot be expected to provide fertile soil for the heroic and inspired. They do not require or encourage the noble. What rules and sets the standards of respectability and emulation is not virtue or wisdom. The recognition of the humdrum and prosaic character of life was intended to play a central role in the success of real politics. And the understanding of human nature which makes this whole project feasible, if believed in, clearly forms a world in which the higher motives have no place. One who holds the “economic” view of man cannot consistently believe in the dignity of man or in the special status of art and science. The success of the enterprise depends precisely on this simplification of man. And if there is a solution to the human problems, there is no tragedy. There was no expectation that, after the bodily needs are taken care of, man would have a spiritual renaissance—and this for two reasons: (1) men will always be mortal, which means that there can be no end to the desire for immortality and to the quest for means to achieve it; and (2) the premise of the whole undertaking is that man’s natural primary concern is preservation and prosperity; the regimes founded on nature take man as he is naturally and will make him ever more natural. If his motives were to change, the machinery that makes modern government work would collapse.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 284.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Life, Wisdom, Men, World

“Americans, 150 years after the Civil War began, are still getting it wrong.”

James W. Loewen (1942) American historian

"Getting the Civil War Right" http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-40-fall-2011/feature/getting-civil-war-right (2011) 2010s, 2011

War

“For a thousand years, the Bible was almost the only book people read, if they could read at all. The stories that were officially told and portrayed were Biblical and religious stories. That other fount of Western civilization as we know it today — the Greek classics — went largely unknown until the Renaissance. For our purposes, there's a noteworthy difference between these two literatures: in the Bible people are hardly ever said to be mad as such, whereas in Greek drama they go off their rockers with alarming frequency. It was the rediscovery of the classics that stimulated the long procession of literary madpeople of the past four hundred years.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

People, Books, Literature, Reading

“We either must jump in this mess strongly regardless of the risk or refuse to take our rightful place in the world. More than at any time since the Napoleonic period Western Civilization and Christianity are at stake. That puts it strongly but is no exaggeration just the same. Lincoln was a moral and upright man. He was a pacifist at heart. But when there was no other alternative he did not equivocate nor cravenly talk of peace when there was no peace. He grabbed the bull by the horns; realizing that the nation could not endure half slave and half free, he threw down the gauntlet and eradicated the evil. We are faced with the same thing and the longer we wait the worse it becomes.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents regarding World War II (April 25, 1941)

World, Peace, Evil, Time

“In no particular order, I could not or would not exist without air, food, water, gravity, tides, the moon, the sun, night, civilization, the laws of physics, the laws of thermodynamics, the law of the land, ancestors having sex, DNA, viruses, bacteria, plants, animals, oceans, ice caps, the kindness of strangers, the Big Bang, familial bonds, smart people, brave people, memory, medicine, the periodic table of elements, tribal instincts, magnetic fields, weather, Earth's molten core, a rotating Earth, a tilted Earth, tectonic plates, sleep, death, heat, consciousness, evolution, teachers and the miraculous, self-regulating chemical factory that is my body. Other than that, I like to think of myself as a self-made man.”

Chuck Lorre (1952) American screenwriter

Chuck Lorre Productions, Vanity Card #469 (1st Aired: 6 Nov 2014) http://www.chucklorre.com/index-mom.php?p=469

Death, People, Family, Law

“Although 50 years of European peace since the end of World War II may augur well for the future, it must be remembered that there were also more than 50 year of peace between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and assumptions of Jean Monnet and other advocates of European integration, the devastating American Civil War shows that a formal political union is no guarantee against an intra-European war.”

Martin Feldstein (1939–2019) American economist

"EMU and international conflict", 1997

War, World, Peace, Hope

“I think that the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end. But when we’ve aligned ourselves with — when we’ve supported the opposition of the Free Syrian Army — the Free Syrian Army is also coupled with the Islamists. And then the fact that we’re also supporting the Kurds and this is — it’s just — it’s just a mess. And that this is the result of regime change that we end up supporting. And, inevitably, these regime changes have led a less-safe world. … That has to be the solution, is joining hands with Russia to bring — to bring this civil war to an end.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

2016

War, World, Way, Support

“In every state and nearly every civilized nation in the developed world, readers know where to go for action and reaction of news – at least one day ahead… Free from any corporate concerns, there are simply too many to thank since the site's inception in 1994. This new attempt at the old American experiment of full freedom in reporting is ever exciting. Those in power have everything to lose by individuals who march to their own rules.”

Matt Drudge (1966) American internet journalist and talk radio host

Matt Drudge, on reaching one billion page views http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/11/12/20021112_180331.htm (December 11, 2002)

World, Freedom

“Psychic disturbances are the consequences of the sexual chaos of society. For thousands of years, this chaos has had the function of psychically subjecting man to the prevailing conditions of existence, of internalizing the external mechanization of life. It has served to bring about the psychic anchoring of a mechanized and authoritarian civilization by making man incapable of functioning independently.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

General Survey
The Function of the Orgasm (1927)

Life

“Man as he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed Nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.”

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

letter to J.B. McChesney http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/muirletters/id/12909/rec/84 (19 September 1871) 1870s

Nature

“The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men, the shock troops of a hateful ideology, gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the beginning of the end of America. By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Mission Accomplished (May 2003)

Men, Hate, War, World

“We sometimes imagine, under the influence of Spenglerian philosophy or some other kind of "historical morphology," that we live in a similar age [to the Romans], the last witnesses of a condemned civilization. But condemned by whom? Not by God, but by some supposed "historical laws." For although we do not know any historical laws, we are in fact able of inventing them quite freely, and such laws, once invented, can then be realized in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

"Looking for the Barbarians"

God, Age, Law, Imagination

“The tragedy of Africa seemingly has no end. Viewing it from afar, the casual Western onlooker can be forgiven if the scenes begin to meld: Ethiopian famine in 1987, Somalian civil war and ensuing famine in 1992, and now Central Africa in 1997. The pictures and footage assume the role of media footnotes: snapshots of hopelessness, disaster, and death that seem as far away as the moon and as unrealistic as some science fiction film. Yet, like the African crises before it, the tragedy of Central Africa is very real and, in a global age, perhaps not as distant as some would like to think. With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Africa Deserves a Closer Look," The World and I, February 1997, by Michael Johns.

Death, War, Age, Thinking

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

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

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

Money, People

“We're in the midst of the greatest crisis we've ever seen and if we don't stop laughing about it and deal with it, we're going to find ourself in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war. It's time we started acting like grownups.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Interview with KHAS-TV, Hastings, Nebraska, February 19, 2009. As transcribed verbatim...jt from MSNBC: Keith Olberman's "Countdown" February 20,09.
2009

War, Time

“The Beltway Right has entered into a civil union with Big Brother.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“Only one conclusion appears to me possible. We shall not promote our welfare by a narrow and shortsighted policy. We can gain nothing by any destruction of govern- ment or society. That action which in the long run is for the advantage of the individual, as it is for the support of our Union, is best summed up in a single word — renunciation. It is only by surrendering a certain amount of our liberty, only by taking on new duties and assuming new obligations, that we make that progress which we characterize as civilization. It is only in like manner that the become partakers of its glory. That is the answer to every herald of discontent and to every preacher of destruction. While this is understood, American institutions and the American Union are secure.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Support, Appearance

“As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars.”
Equidem ad pacem hortari non desino; quae vel iniusta utilior est quam iustissimum bellum cum civibus.

Marcus Tullius Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum

Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus) Book VII, Letter 14, section 3; as translated by E.O. Winstedt in the Loeb Classical Library http://archive.org/stream/letterstoatticus02ciceuoft#page/68/mode/2up

War, Peace

“I remember this, that King James had behind him the letter of the law just as completely as Mr. Asquith has now. He made sure of it. He got the judges on his side by methods not dissimilar from those by which Mr. Asquith has a majority in the House of Commons on his side. There is another point to which I would specially refer. In order to carry out his despotic intention the King had the largest army which had ever been seen in England. What happened? There was no civil war. Why? Because his own army refused to fight for him.”

Bonar Law (1858–1923) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Dublin (28 November, 1913).

War, Law, Fight, Housing

“We physicians have focused on the nuclear threat as the singular issue of our era. We are not indifferent to other human rights and hard-won civil liberties. But first we must be able to bequeath to our children the most fundamental of all rights, which preconditions all others; the right to survival.”

Bernard Lown (1921–2021) American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter, as well as a recipient of the…

Nobel Peace Prize acceptance (1985)

Children, Indifference

“Worthy sons and daughters these. Fit successors to those who christened our banners in the immortal beginning. Worthy sons of those who saved the Union and nationality when civil war wiped out the ambiguity from the Constitution. Ready sons of those who drew the sword for humanity's sake the first time in the world in 1898. The four million defenders on land and sea were worthy of the best traditions of a people never warlike in peace and never pacifist in war. They commanded our pride. They have our gratitude, which must have genuine expression. It's not only a duty -- it's a privilege to see that the sacrifices made shall be requited, and that those still suffering from casualties and visibilities shall be abundantly aided and restored to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoyments.”

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

1920s, The American Soldier (1920)

War, People, World, Peace

“My own conviction is that if the transfer cannot be made without civil war, it cannot be made at all, and that there is a reasonable probability that, if the government is supported by a considerable majority of citizens and if it is re-enforced by a powerful labor movement and cooperative movement, the change may be brought about without armed resistance from the owning class. The program that I have outlined is, of course, that of the Socialist Party of America, although not all Socialists will agree with everything that I have written.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

War, Support, Change

“…we have become rich in a variety of acquirements, favoured above measure in the gifts of Providence, unrivalled in commerce, pre-eminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we are in the possession of peace, of happiness, and of liberty; we are under the guidance of a mild and beneficent religion; and we are protected by impartial laws, and the purest administration of justice: we are living under a system of government which our own happy experience leads us to pronounce the best and wisest which has ever yet been framed; a system which has become the admiration of the world.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 April 1792), reprinted in reprinted in W. S. Hathaway (ed.), The Speeches of William Pitt in the House of Commons. Volume I (London: 1817), p. 394.

Happiness, World, Peace, Religion

“We don't have the luxury of our own privatized civil rights movements because the crimes - the ignorance, the rage, the hate against the who/what/why of some of us, is a much much larger foe. Together we are more than the sum of our parts. In union, in communion, in joining hands, we conquer all, because we have love on our side.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Love, Hate, Rage, Parting

“Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech, 1858
1850s

Country

“While National Socialism brought about a new version and formulation of European culture, Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself. It is not only anti-bourgeois, it is anti-cultural. It means, in the final consequence, the absolute destruction of all economic, social, state, cultural, and civilizing advances made by western civilization for the benefit of a rootless and nomadic international clique of conspirators, who have found their representation in Jewry.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Speech at the Nazi party Congress at Nuremberg (September 1935) http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb58.htm 1930s

War

“Our people have had the honor to be among those who founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Despite the innumerable errors, both large and small, it is an undeniable fact that only as a part of the USSR have our people been able to survive Turkish invasion, live within secure borders, and progress economically and culturally. In spite of the current criticisms expressed from every quarter, it is a fact that the inhabitants of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic today enjoy a higher standard of living and more security than have Armenians at any other time in their three thousand year history. And all of this has taken place in the face of enormous challenges, including foreign invasion, economic isolation, civil war and an unimaginably costly World War.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

“National Self-Determination or National Suicide?” p. 165. The article was originally written in Armenian, dated October 24, 1988, and posted form Poissy Prison, in France. It was first published in the first edition of The Right to Struggle, 1990.
The Right to Struggle (1993)

War, People, World, Error

“To be genuinely civilized means to be able to walk straightly and to live honorably without the props and crutches of one or another of the childish dreams which have so far supported men. That such a life is likely to be ecstatically happy I will not claim. But that it can be lived in quiet content, accepting resignedly what cannot be helped not expecting the impossible, and being thankful for small mercies, this I would maintain. That it will be difficult for men in general to learn this lesson I do not deny. But that it will be impossible I would not admit since so many have learned it already.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 17

Life, Men, Happiness, Dreams

“[…] ironically, the jihadis are just as opposed to the theory of evolution as creationists. So they have that in common […] This is an area in which Islamists agree 100% with the Discovery Institute and creationists. If that makes you uncomfortable … well, it should. […] I'm making a very narrowly defined point. The proponents of "intelligent design" are on the same page with radical Islamists, on that issue. And the devaluation of science by Islam, in favor of religion, is largely responsible for the appalling state of the Islamic world today. Western civilization has advanced to its current point because we DO have a strict division between these two disciplines. Science is not religion, and religion is not science. If we lose that clarity, we're in danger of losing everything. As I've tried to say at least 20 different ways, this is not a put down of religion. Religion is a civilizing force, as long it's not allowed to rule people's lives. The intelligent design movement is trying to erase these lines and bring us back into the Dark Ages. We should learn from the failure of Islam, but this is an issue that is obviously not going to rest easy.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

June 16, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30370_Video-_Bobby_Jindal_Supports_Teaching_Intelligent_Design/comments/

People, Age, World, Religion

“His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Letter (2 November 1917) to Lord Rothschild; this letter became known as the Balfour Declaration, quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 171.

People, Home, Communication, Country

“I make that --- twice now, on a Monday I let returning Iraqi injured soldiers come to the premises. The most beautiful people I've ever seen. But they're missing arms and legs, they're with their wives, sometimes they're with their girlfriends. And the tears are coming down the faces of these people. I mean, thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands, and the Iraqis that have been just maimed and killed. This war is a horrible thing. Now, President Bush says he's religious. And yet 400,000 people, the way I count it, have died, and probably millions have been badly maimed and injured. What's going on? What's going on? And the day we pull out it's going to explode. We're keeping the lid on a little bit. It's still a catastrophe, but the day we pull out, because they're in a civil war. Whether we want to admit it or not, they're in a civil war.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interview on "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/16/sitroom.03.html (16 March 2007) 2000s

War, People, Beauty, Way

“The world, Ahlrada Ahn knew, was indifferent to the necessity of preservation. Of histories, of stories layered with meaning and import. It cared nothing for what was forgotten, for memory and knowledge had never been able to halt the endless repetition of wilful stupidity that so bound peoples and civilizations.”

Steven Erikson book The Bonehunters

The Bonehunters (2006)

People, Stupidity, World, History

“Robert Siegel: You've said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.Robert Siegel: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: Well, actually, I think it's confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I'm in favor of. I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven't really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we're going to vote for the Civil Rights Act.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Rand Paul Says He Has A Tea Party 'Mandate'
All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-05-19
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126985068

Truth, Hope, Courage, Business

“The mandate entails a generous synthesis of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The title requires the expert to be truly independent, keep an open mind, conduct his/her research objectively and without ideological prejudices, listen to all sides of an argument and seek the opinion of all stakeholders.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred de Zayas Statement by on his personal website http://alfreddezayas.com. 2013

“Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Plato; or, The Philosopher
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

History

“The moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations. The gain-seeking impulse supported by brute force has taken its place, and so far as the surface of things is concerned human civilization has gone back a full thousand years. Inconceivable though it be, we are brought face to face in this twentieth century with governments of peoples once great and highly civilized, whose word now means absolutely nothing. A pledge is something not to be kept, but to be broken. Cruelty and national lust have displaced human feeling and friendly international co-operation. Human life has no value, and the savings of generations are wasted month by month and almost day by day in mad attempts to dominate the whole world in pursuit of gain.
How has all this been possible? What has happened to the teachings and inspiring leadership of the great prophets and apostles of the mind, who for nearly three thousand years have been holding before mankind a vision of the moral ideal supported by intellectual power? What has become of the influence and guidance of the great religions Christian, Moslem, Hebrew, Buddhist with their counsels of peace and good-will, or of those of Plato and of Aristotle, of St. Augustine and of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of the outstanding captains of the mind Spanish, Italian, French, English, German who have for hundreds of years occupied the highest place in the citadel of human fame? The answer to these questions is not easy. Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible.
Are we, then, of this twentieth century and of this still free and independent land to lose heart and to yield to the despair which is becoming so widespread in countries other than ours? Not for one moment will we yield our faith or our courage! We may well repeat once more the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Most governments have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men, ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it think of it!"
However dark the skies may seem now, however violent and apparently irresistible are the savage attacks being made with barbarous brutality upon innocent women and children and non-combatant men, upon hospitals and institutions for the care of the aged and dependent, upon cathedrals and churches, upon libraries and galleries of the world s art, upon classic monuments which record the architectural achievements of centuries we must not despair. Our spirit of faith in the ultimate rule of the moral ideal and in the permanent establishment of liberty of thought, of speech, of worship and of government will not, and must not, be permitted to weaken or to lose control of our mind and our action.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Life, Women, Men, Children

“The politics of control and manipulation can only have a degenerative effect on civilization and stability. When larger systems dominate smaller ones, society and its members must face a host of bad choices, debilitating harm, and dicey outcomes. Once the leviathan has been released, few can really control its movements. So once the damage has become visible, historians can point to the inevitable source of the criminality: the ‘structured order’ of politics, rather than an ‘unstructured order’ of the people. To the gullible, this is a shocking revelation. How could any system entrusted with maintaining order destroy the very thing it had sworn to uphold?”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 91

People

“Civility carries with it the essence of courtesy, politeness, and consideration of others. All of the education and accomplishments in the world will not count for much unless they are accompanied by marks of gentility, of respect for others, of going the extra mile.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

World, Education

“A human life is defined by its relationship with others: by its duty to its species. In the face of this duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless. What you call individual rights are merely the cultural fantasy of a failed civilization.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

(I.3) Del Rey, p. 74
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

Life, Happiness

“…under extremely difficult circumstances (Iraq) pursues the inherently complicated task of rebuilding the country. Yet Iraq continues, courageously, to reach for the promise of a democratic, federal and pluralistic state, where generations of oppressed Iraqis will regain their dignity, freedom and the right to join the civilized and progressive nations of the world.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

Olivia Ward (September 23, 2006) "Keep U.S., British forces in Iraq, says Talabani", The Toronto Star, p. A12.

World, Courage, Freedom, Country

“Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. Upon crossing the shadow line, it is more the desire to act than the power to do so that is lost. Is it possible, after fifty years of experiences and disappointments, to retain the ardent curiosity of youth, the desire to know and understand, the power to love wholeheartedly, the certainty that beauty, intelligence, and kindness unite naturally, and to preserve faith in the efficacy of reason? Beyond the shadow line lies the realm of even, tempered light where the eyes, not being dazzled any more by the blinding sun of desire, can see things and people as they are. How is it possible to believe in the moral perfection of pretty women if you have loved one of them? How is it possible to believe in progress when you have discovered throughout a long and difficult life that no violent change can triumph over human nature and that it is only the most ancient customs and ceremonies that can provide people with the flimsy shelter of civilization? "What's the use?" says the old man to himself. This is perhaps the most dangerous phrase he can utter, for after having said: "What's the use of struggling?" he will say one day: "What's the use of going out?" then: "What's the use of leaving my room?" then: "What's the use of leaving my bed?" and at last comes "What's the use of living?"”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

which opens the portals of death.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Life, Death, Women

“You can lock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices and call out over the house-tops so that men cannot but hear. You hounded wild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue St. Jacques and jeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin, piping tones swelled a hundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution, and civilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of his voice.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Men, Housing

“In the decades before Zero, the Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software. The density with which they’d been able to pack transistors onto chips still had not been matched by any fabrication plant now in existence. Their devices could hold more data than anything you could buy today. Their ability to communicate through all sorts of wireless schemes was only now being matched.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Five Thousand Years Later"
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Intelligence, Communication

“For the highest exercise of judicial duty is to subordinate one's personal pulls and one's private views to the law of which we are all guaradians - those impersonal convictions that made a society a civilized community, and not the victims of personal rule.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

A Heritage For All Who Love The Law 51 ABAJ 330 (1965); quoted by United States Senator Howell Heflin during the confirmation debate for Justice David Souter, on September 24, 1990, S13540.
Other writings

Law, Exercises, Communication, Personality

“Y'know, when I said SEIU and ACORN, these were the brownshirts, people said that's crazy and I hope to God it is. But you tell me what they are if they're not thugs, enforcing the will of the masters in Washington. Be very careful, because the things that I have told you on this program were coming are here. We are in the most dangerous point in our republic, I believe, since the Civil War. We may be in the most dangerous place ever, because our people are different, our people are not as connected to God as we once were.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2000s, 2009

God, War, People, Hope

“I well remember, as a young teenager, seeing signs printed in large black letters at the fronts of buses: "White seat from front, colored seat from rear." One day when I was thirteen, my friends and I were riding home from school in a half-empty bus — this was at the time that the civil rights movement was just getting off the ground and some police officers were just looking for a reason to shoot a black person who "got out of line." So, counter to our real feelings, we decided to avoid trouble by moving to the back of the bus when the driver told us to.
By that time, the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides had kind of broken the ice, even though things hadn't fully changed. So we saw it every day on TV and read about it in the news. Dad always said, "Stay out of trouble," and we did.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=hdhWF9bVqXwC&pg=PA25 2010s, This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House (2011)

School, Color, Feeling, Home

“I considered acting an opportunity to express emotions—and I took advantage of every opportunity l got. It took me a long time to discover that restraint can be admirable. Restraint, however, does not mean lack of emotion. The thing that irks me is lack of emotion trying to pass for restraint. Lack of emotion is pathological; restraint is civilized.”

Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer

"Leonard Nimoy's Confessions About His Emotions", TV And Movie Play magazine (1967)

Time

“The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason, and to rely on one's primeval instincts, urges, intuitions, and whims. With such tools, they are unable to grasp even what is needed to satisfy their wishes; for example, the wish to have a festival. Where would they be without the charity of the local "squares" who fed them? Where would they be without the fifty doctors rushed from New York to save their lives? Without the automobiles that brought them to the festival? Without the soda pop and beer they substituted for water? Without the helicopters that brought the entertainers? Without all the achievements of the technological civilization they denounce? Left to their own devices, they literally didn't know enough to come in out of the rain.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

Beer, Water

“A Justice Department survey reports that 70 percent of those arrested for serious crimes are drug uses, which may mean that "drugs cause crime." A more sophisticated analysis suggests that the high cost of drugs, a result of their prohibition, forces drug users to turn crime to support an unnecessarily expensive habit.
Drug prohibition, by giving young people the thrill of breaking the law and giving pushers a strong incentive to find new customers, may actually increase the number of drug users. Moreover, out policy of pressuring friendly governments to wipe out drug cultivation has undermined many of those regimes and provoked resentment against us among their citizens and government officials.
We can either escalate the war on drugs, which would have dire implications for civil liberties and the right to privacy, or find a way to gracefully withdraw. Withdrawal should not be viewed as an endorsement of drug use; it would simply be an acknowledgment that the cost of this war- billions of dollars, runaway crime rates and restrictions on our personal freedom — is too high.”

David Boaz (1953) libertarian, author and editor

"Let's Quit the Drug War" in The New York Times (17 March 1988) http://www.cato.org/research/articles/boaz-880317.html

War, People, Justice, Law

“India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom…. The old communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country must go,'it is to be hoped by a slackening of tension, by a progressive understanding of the need of peace and concord, by the constant necessity of common and concerted action, even of an instrument of union for that purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever form'the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, the division must and will go. For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and even frustrated. But that must not be.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August 15, 1947 (A passage from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's independence. August 15 is also Sri Aurobindo's own birthday.)
India's Rebirth

Peace, Hope, Way, Communication

“(Man on television) Man is the hunter. Woman is the civilizing influence, and when women abandon that role, men become (Sylvia) Cranky, and start wars.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p.169

Women, Men, War

“To be an existentialist, one must be able to feel oneself — one must know one’s desires, one’s rages, one’s anguish, one must be aware of the character of one’s frustration and know what would satisfy it. The over-civilized man can be an existentialist only if it is chic, and deserts it quickly for the next chic.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"The White Negro", first published in Dissent (Summer 1957)
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

Feeling, Rage

“Everywhere that there is aristocracy in the world, there is sympathy for the Confederacy, and rejoicing that this civil war looks like it's finally going to paid for good to these notions of democracy.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Andre Damon (2013)

War, World, Democracy

“There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.”

Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886) American politician, 21st President of the United States (in office from 1881 to 1885)

First annual message (1881).
1880s

Sense, Patience

“When Pushkin - who was in the position of having to think what form a national culture might take - called for a dispassionate criticism, he wasn't calling for help in writing poems, which he could do all by himself. He was merely stated his wish to write them in a civilized atmosphere, whose absence was reducing him to isolation, and thereby damaging his individuality.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'A Death in Life'
Essays and reviews, Snakecharmers in Texas (1988)

Thinking, Help

“Art goes… imitating that Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature, Man. For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a Common-Wealth or State, (in latine Civitas) which is but an Artificiall Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other Officers of Judicature and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and Punishment (by which fastned to the seate of the Soveraignty, every joynt and member is moved to performe his duty) are the Nerves, that do the same in the Body Naturall; The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members, are the Strength; Salus Populi (the peoples safety) its Businesse; Counsellors, by whom all things needfull for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the Memory; Equity and Lawes, an artificiall Reason and Will; Concord, Health; Sedition, Sicknesse; and Civill war, Death.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

Lastly, the Pacts and Covenants, by which the parts of this Body Politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.
The Introduction
Leviathan (1651)

Life, Death, God, War

“Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out. It overtook the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence. It weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of annihilation and dissolution. Civilization decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed. The East, it seems, was similarly visited, though in accordance with and in proportion to [the East's more affluent] civilization. It was as if the voice of existence in the world had called out for oblivion and restriction, and the world responded to its call. God inherits the earth and whomever is upon it.”

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) Arab historiographer and historian

Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 67.

God, World, Way, Change

“There is so great a need for civility and mutual respect among those of differing beliefs and philosophies. We must not be partisans of any doctrine of ethnic superiority. We live in a world of diversity. We can and must be respectful toward those with whose teachings we may not agree. We must be willing to defend the rights of others who may become the victims of bigotry.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

First talk as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 3,1995.

World

“It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582, 597 (1946).
Judicial opinions

History, Freedom, Light

“The outcome of the Brexit Referendum could very likely to prove to be as significant and as beneficial to Europe as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And the benefits of Brexit won’t just be felt in the UK and Europe - many African countries may reap long-term economic and political benefits from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Project Fear’s apocalyptic claims turned out to be bunkum. We are not in the midst of World War Three. Western Civilization has not collapsed.”

Peter Whittle (politician) (1961) British author, politician, and journalist

100 Reasons to be Cheerful about the Brexit Results http://www.peterwhittleam.com/press-releases/100-reasons-to-be-cheerful-about-the-brexit-result (September 30, 2016)

War, World, Fear, Country

Quotes about civilization page 9

Quotes about civilization
page 9