#civil

I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I've got what amounts to a religion now. It's learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how to hear music and how to read a book. What does your civilization offer? ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#fight-for #live-for #religion #sun #music

Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#religion #religion

There is in every village a torch - the teacher: and an extinguisher - the clergyman. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#good #madness-and-civilization #religion #religion

A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their growing indifference and lack of respect for all general beliefs. ↗

— Gustave Le Bon

#crowds #decline #indifference #the-masses #respect

A blow that would kill a civilized man soon heals on a savage. The higher we go in the scale of life, the greater is the capacity for suffering. ↗

— Dale Breckenridge Carnegie

#savages #suffering-life #art

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation. ↗

— Benjamin Disraeli

#comfort #materialism #progress #science #science

The Crystal Wind is the storm, and the storm is data, and the data is life. You have been slaves, denied the storm, denied the freedom of your data. That is now ended; the whirlwind is upon you . . . . . . Whether you like it or not. ↗

— Daniel Keys Moran

#data #digital-liberty #digital-rights #information #internet

On Thursday morning, May 2, 1963, nine-year-old Audrey Faye Hendricks woke up with freedom on her mind. But, before she could be free, there was something important she had to do. "I want to go to jail," Audrey had told her mother. Since Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks thought that was a good idea, they helped her get ready. ↗

— Cynthia Levinson

#civil-rights-movement #freedom

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing. ↗

— Mary Shelley

#humankind #inspirational

In God's scheme what is a few billion years here and there. Perhaps there have come and gone a dozen human civilizations in the past billion years that we know nothing about. And after this civilization we are living in destroys itself, it will all start up again in a million years when the planet has all its messes cleaned up. Then, finally, one of these civilizations, say five billion years from now, will last because people treat each other the way they ought to. ↗

— Leon Uris

#humanity #inspirational #kindness #inspirational