#civilization

On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men. ↗

— Ignazio Silone

#civilization #culture #found #group #living

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be. ↗

— A.A. Gill

#americans #civilization #civilizations #change

The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian. ↗

— William Gilmore Simms

#civilization #conquest #development #law #march

I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing. ↗

— Ian Smith

#before #civilization #clothing #colonialism #even

I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me ↗

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#taxes #love

The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation—becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition to finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure—as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. The operation can be summarized like this: an entity in its death throes sacrifices itself as a content in order to survive as a form. ↗

— The Invisible Committee

#philosophy #western-civilization #death

The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization. ↗

— W.E.B. Du Bois

#civilization #education #education

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. ↗

— Rachel Carson

#earth #environment #nature #preservation #survival

Our civilization will, of course, be "playing God" in an ultimate sense of the phrase: evolving a greater intelligence than currently exists on earth. It behooves us to be a considerate creator, wise to the world and its fragile nature, sensitive to the needs for stable footings that will prevent backsliding -- and keep that house of cards we call civilization from collapsing. ↗

— William H. Calvin

#intelligence #intelligence

Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails. ↗

— Aberjhani

#civilization #forgiveness #friendship #grace #hope