1,222 Quotes About Civilization

Technological civilization... rests fundamentally on power-driven machinery which transcends the physical limits of its human directors, multiplying indefinitely the capacity for the production of goods. Science in all its branches - physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology - is the servant and upholder of this system

American civilization, from its beginnings, had combined a dogmatic confidence in the future with a naive puzzlement over what the future might bring.

The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.

The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.

Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilization that you wish to uphold.

Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.

When discussing the rise and fall of empires, it is well to mark closely their rate of growth, avoiding the temptation to telescope time and discover too early signs of greatness in a state which we know will one day be great, or to predict too early the collapse of an empire which we know will one day cease to be. The life-span of empires cannot be plotted by events, only by careful diagnosis and ausculation--and as in medicine there is always room for error.

The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization.

The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization