#civilization

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

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization. ↗

— Arnold J. Toynbee

#able #civilization #fill #intelligently #last

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. ↗

— Mark Twain

#limitless #multiplication #necessities #unnecessary

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization. ↗

— Daniel Webster

#begins #civilization #cultivation #earth #farmers

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#before #began #civilization #effects #especially

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

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#believe #civilization #cost #created #exigencies

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war. ↗

— Stanley Crouch

#allows #because #civilization #deal #develop

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education... no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ↗

— Abraham Flexner

#billions #borrow #borrowed #both #cannot

Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ↗

— Abraham Flexner

#cannot #choice #civilization #enough #make