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Civilization Quotes
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The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it — they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization.
Mark Twain
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The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It's easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward. It is easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples, a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.
Barack Obama
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I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible to civilization. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that the reformation must be worked.
Thomas Jefferson
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One... gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed.
Sigmund Freud
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No greater tragedy exists in modern civilization than the aged, worn-out worker who after a life of ceaseless effort and useful productivity must look forward for his declining years to a poorhouse. A modern social consciousness demands a more humane and efficient arrangement.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Our non-co-operation is with the system the English have established in India, with the material civilization and its attendant greed and exploitation of the weak.
Mahatma Gandhi
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The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion.
Bertrand Russell
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The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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I want co-operation between nations for the salvaging of civilization, but co-operation presupposes free nations worthy of co-operation.
Mahatma Gandhi
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The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to which civilization and philosophy has painfully struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery.
George Bernard Shaw
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Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
Bertrand Russell
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Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The great mass of society are far from being depraved; for if a large majority were criminal or inclined to break the laws, where would the force or power be to prevent or constrain them? And herein is the real blessing of civilization, because this happy result has its origin in her bosom, growing out of her very nature.
Napoleon I of France
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A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.
Victor Hugo
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Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Finally, this world movement of civilization, this movement which is now felt throbbing in every corner of the globe, should bind the nations of the world together while yet leaving unimpaired that love of country in the individual citizen which in the present stage of the world's progress is essential to the world's well-being.
Theodore Roosevelt
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Our privacy... has been slowly and steadily and increasingly invaded until now our very dream of civilization is in danger. Who will save us but the scientist and the humanitarian? Yes, the humanitarian in science, and the scientist in the humanity of man.
William Faulkner
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The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, I would say, is what distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.
Bertrand Russell
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A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
Ezra Pound
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Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilization; it represents a great sin.
Mahatma Gandhi
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You have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. … Lastly, I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.
Charles Darwin
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What we are confronted with now is a growing perception that if we desire a certain type of civilization and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it,
George Bernard Shaw
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At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.
Lafcadio Hearn
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