#civilization

colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstacy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#civilization

Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people. ↗

— César Chávez

#animal-rights #kindness-to-animals #vegan #civilization

They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so simliar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become aquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement. ↗

— Jane Austen

#literature #romance #civilization

Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say.Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- "No, YOU move. ↗

— J. Michael Straczynski

#right #truth #civilization

Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature. - Yes; it's a funny habit. - No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, however funny it may seem to man. If dogs could reason and criticize us they'd be sure to find just as much that would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their masters -far more, I think. I am more convinced that there is far more foolishness among us. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#nature #society #funny

We are all proprietary toward cities we love. 'Ah, you should have seen her when I loved her!' we say, reciting glories since faded or defiled, trusting her to no one else; that others should know and love her in her present fallen state (for she must fall without our vigilant love) is a species of betrayal. ↗

— Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

#civilization #great-cities #love

We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires to throttle our children, poison our spouse, or end our marriage over a dispute about changing a lightbulb. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#chaos #civilization #desires #necessity #order

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta. ↗

— Brian Aldiss

#civilization #distance #himself #his #man

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses. ↗

— Georges Bernanos

#civilization #constitute #enough #exists #masses

Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply. ↗

— Norman Borlaug

#adequate #civilization #could #evolved #food supply