Quotes about Civilization

A Catholic culture does not mean or imply universality. A nation or a whole civilization is of the Catholic culture not when it is entirely composed of strong believers minutely practicing their religion, nor even whit it boasts a majority of such, but when it presents a determining number of units-family institutions, individuals, inspired by and tenacious of the Catholic spirit.

Martin Luther King said it was time to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of human civilization. I don't think anyone is calling Martin Luther King a New Age woo-woo.

Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.

Jesus wept Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

Our civilization has moved through three world views: from paganism (no pity and no pacifism) to Christianity (pity but not pacifism) to modernity (pity and pacifism). It is now moving to postmodernity, which is a new pacifism, a pacifism without spiritual warfare, a war on the very notion of spiritual warfare, and a war without pity or mercy for its enemy

America has learned what our repressive and terrorist adversaries do not understand: that liberty without law is anarchy, liberty to defy law is rebellion, but liberty limited by law is the cornerstone of civilization.

As civilization speeds toward its final destiny, the appearance of a powerful world ruler is inevitable.

Violence has followed our species every step of the way in its long journey through time.

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.

Contrary to nature's rule of "survival of the fittest," we humans measure civilization by how we respond to the most vulnerable and the suffering.

Civilisation once looked to art as the means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. Writing itself was invented in part to convey the sacred: permanent things deserved a permanent place, hence the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. But a modern civilisation that no longer believes in permanent things, one that accepts no certain narrative of meaning, resorts to deconstruction, not construction.

If you build a society in which children honor their parents, your society will long survive. And the corollary is: a society in which children do not honor their parents is doomed to self-destruction. In our time, this connection between honoring parents and maintaining civilization is not widely recognized.