#civilization

Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing... and the Gospel according to St. Thomas... was a new thrust like the titanic thrust of Gothic engineering; and its strength was in a God that makes all things new. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#civilization #culture #europe #history #renaissance

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print. [Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32] ↗

— Barbara W. Tuchman

#civilization #humanity #literature #mind #thought

Poets write beautiful words to describe savagery-wrapped civilization nowadays. ↗

— Toba Beta

#savagery #beauty

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

— Jane Addams

#civilization #equal #living #men #method

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

Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any subtlety of thought or expression. A man for his time, indeed. ↗

— Iain Pears

#coarseness #crudeness #education #ignorance #stupidity

Even today, some opt for the comforts of mystification, preferring to believe that the wonders of the ancient world were built by Atlanteans, gods, or space travelers, instead of by thousands toiling in the sun. Such thinking robs our forerunners of their due, and us of their experience. Because then one can believe whatever one likes about the past - without having to confront the bones, potsherds, and inscriptions which tell us that people all over the world, time and again, have made similar advances and mistakes. ↗

— Ronald Wright

#civilization #history #knowledge #experience

And it came to me as I stood on the desert sand, looking at the Great Pyramid, that what any civilization says about God tells us more about that civilization than it does about God. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#faith #god #faith

Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax. ↗

— Lauren Willig

#family #revolution #family

People usually feel funny, smile and laugh when I tell them about my strong belief in the very existence of prehistoric advanced technology and great civilizations of wilier races. I just can't wait to see their faces at time the truth is revealed. ↗

— Toba Beta

#ancient #civilization #mystery #prehistoric #reveal