#civilization

[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

This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship—replete with ever more rights and responsibilities—would provide superb manpower for growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service. The ancient Western world would soon come to define itself by culture rather than by race, skin color, or language. That idea alone would eventually bring enormous advantages to its armies on the battlefield. (p. 122) ↗

— Victor Davis Hanson

#civilization #consent #contract-for-service #government #politics

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#civilization

Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#civilization

Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens. ↗

— Derrick Jensen

#government #civilization

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization. ↗

— Roger Ebert

#empathy #civilization

Back through the ages of barbarism and civilization, in all tongues, we find this instinctive pleasure in the imitative action that is the very essence of all drama. ↗

— George P. Baker

#ages #back #barbarism #civilization #drama

Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and Englishman all passed, leaving each his legend; and a brilliant and more or less feudal civilization with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with the economic system upon which it rested. ↗

— Hervey Allen

#brilliant #civilization #departed #each #economic

It is only through books that we partake of the great harvest that is human civilization across the ages. ↗

— Ibrahim Babangida

#ages #books #civilization #great #harvest

The papacy again, representing the traditional unity of European civilization, has also shown itself unable to limit effectively the push of nationalism. ↗

— Irving Babbitt

#also #civilization #effectively #european #itself