#civilization

A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#beings #civilization #exist #express #freely

The vast upheaval of the World War set in motion forces that will either destroy civilization or raise mankind to undreamed of heights of human welfare and prosperity. ↗

— Arthur Henderson

#destroy #either #forces #heights #human

If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force. ↗

— Auberon Herbert

#cannot #certainly #civilization #effort #example

Roman civilization had achieved, within the bounds of its technology, relatively as great a mastery of time and space as we have achieved today. ↗

— Arthur Erickson

#bounds #civilization #great #had #mastery

It is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by a process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. [...] In political civilization, the state is an abstraction and the relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no roots in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you, whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who in the excitement of his play imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother. ↗

— Rabindranath Tagore

#politics #tradition #values #western-civilization #food

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#before #began #civilization #effects #especially

For in this century, within the next decades, will be decided for generations whether all mankind is to become Communist, whether the whole world is to become free, or whether, in the struggle, civilization as we know it is to be completely destroyed or completely changed. ↗

— Whittaker Chambers

#century #changed #civilization #communist #completely

At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it. ↗

— Whittaker Chambers

#call #case #cast #civilization #could

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying. ↗

— Abel Ferrara

#big #big fan #big problem #certain #civilization

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed. ↗

— Emile M. Cioran

#destroyed #gods #only