#civilization

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

— Emile M. Cioran

#destroyed #gods #only

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours. ↗

— Grover Cleveland

#ago #assigned #assumed #civilization #higher

Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand. ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #crudeness #education #knowledge #like-mindedness

The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization. ↗

— Herbert Croly

#american #benefits #citizens #civilization #economic

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 fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#cannot #civilization #dramatic #emotional #fact

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#angry person #began #cast #civilization #first

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

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

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former. ↗

— Karl Kraus

#behind #civilization #culture #disappear #existence