#civilization

Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos. ↗

— Edward Bellamy

#chaos #civilization #imagination

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

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them! ↗

— Albert Einstein

#military #violence #war #life

I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#depression #life #philosophy #life

What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pleasant situation. ↗

— Terence McKenna

#culture #life #terence-mckenna #life

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#men

My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed. ↗

— Robert E. Howard

#civilization #men

Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#civilization

‎'I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights — any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; as when my neighbor's cow breaks out of her pasture early in the Spring and boldly swims the river, a cold grey tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the Buffalo crossing the Mississippi. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#nature #philosophy #love