1,222 Quotes About Civilization

The exaltation of human reason and its capabilities, a commitment to rigorous and rational debate, a promotion of intellectual inquiry and scholarly exchange--all sponsored by the Church--provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution.

The numbers will never tell the full story of what life on Earth is all about.

Being the most insecure species on earth, humans have a tendency to seek for instruction manuals for even the fundamental experiences and realizations of life. And that's why so many con-artists, that is, the mystical fraudsters are able to keep cashing on their insecurity, by selling them diagrams and techniques to liberation. The number of gurus, yogis, swamis and psychics in a country increases exponentially with the fall of reason, and the fall of reason leads to the fall of civilization.

Вся человеческая цивилизация с самого начала была не чем иным, как с каждым часом все более интенсивным тлением, и никто не знает, как долго она будет тлеть и когда начнет угасать.

The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

There is no way I can avoid thinking about the kind of world I belong to. The abuse of utopias disfigures everything.

On why 300 years separates the first use of glass lenses in spectacles and their use in a telescope: “In many cases there are times when an invention is technologically possible – and in which it may indeed appear necessary, as the telescope may have – but without a market the idea will not sell, and in the absence of the technical and social infrastructure to support it, the invention will not survive.

The inventors of tools enhance civilization,but the author of ideas enables them to invent.