#civilization

We are all afraid for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. ↗

— Jacob Bronowski

#because #civilization #confidence #engagement #every

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization. ↗

— Frantz Fanon

#ascribe #assume #basic #certain #civilization

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. ↗

— John Buchan

#barbarism #bring #civilization #division #earth

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#cost #housing #life #life

The flush toilet, more than any single invention, has 'civilized' us in a way that religion and law could never accomplish. ↗

— Thomas Lynch

#civilized #toilet #life

From the Renaissance until today, Christianity, and also to some extent Judaism, in the West have had to carry out a constant battle against ideologies, philosophies, institutions and practices which are secular in nature and which challenge the authority of religion and in fact its very validity and legitimacy. These challenges to religion have varied from political ideas which are based on secularism to the denial of the religious foundation of morality and the philosophical denial of the reality of God and of the after life or of revelation and sacred scripture. The history of the West has been marked during the last few centuries by a constant battle between the forces of religion and secularism and in fact the gaining of the upper hand by secularism and consequently the denial of the reality of religion and its pertinence to various domains of life. ↗

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr

#secularism #western-civilization #life

All civilizations at some time have fallen into this total terror, when the mystery of life was a kind of panic only to be assuaged by the spilling of blood. ↗

— Laurie Lee

#civilization #life #panic #religion #sacrifice

[Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain? ↗

— Frank Harris

#homosexuality #punishment #sins #temptation #men

To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself. ↗

— Dee Brown

#indians #nature #nature

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him. ↗

— Will Durant

#commanding-nature #eternal-recurrence #history #history-repeating-itself #science