#civilization

Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams - day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing - are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. ↗

— L. Frank Baum

#civilization #discovery #dreams #imagination #invention

Two diametrically opposed points of view concerning religion in the West are to bee seen among Muslims. Some consider all Westerners to be Christians, with the small Jewish minority being of course an exception, and often refer to Westerners as "those Christians" as if the West were of the Middle Ages when the Crusades were carried out and when Western civilization lived in what has been called the Age of Faith. Another group of Muslims hold the opposite view that all Westerners are materialists or agnostics and skeptics and in fact there is no religion among the Westerners. Now it is essential to insist that both of these views are false. ↗

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr

#western-civilization #age

I have the not altogether unsatisfying impression that civilisation is collapsing around me. Is it my age, I wonder, or the age we live in? I am not sure. Civilisations do collapse, after all, but on the other hand people grow old with rather greater frequency. ↗

— Theodore Dalrymple

#civilization #decline #age

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. ↗

— Barbara Tuchman

#carriers #civilization #crippled #dumb #history

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men. ↗

— Jane Addams

#civilization #equal #living #men #method

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. ↗

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

#continues #death #installment #installment plan #men

No hizo falta mucho para reducir el castillo de naipes de la civilización. Solo unas pocas ráfagas y pasó, la balanza se inclinó, se rompió el encanto. Los buenos ciudadanos se dieron cuenta de que las líneas que habían dado forma a sus vidas eran imaginarias y se cruzaban con facilidad. Tenían deseos y necesidades y el poder para satisfacerlas, así que lo hicieron. En el momento en que se apagaron las luces, todo el mundo dejó de fingir. ↗

— Isaac Marion

#death #humanity #death

Civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark. ↗

— Iain Pears

#dreams

Civilization is a race between disaster and education. ↗

— H.G. Wells

#education

Passion and courtesy are two polar opposite traits that serve to balance each other into a full-blooded whole. Without socialization, passion is a crude barbarian, and without passion, the elegant and polite are dead. Allow both passion and courtesy into your life in equal measure, and be complete. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#barbarism #civil #civilization #courtesy #manners