The average age
of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years.
These nations
have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to
spiritual faith-
from spiritual
faith to great courage-
from courage to
liberty-
from liberty to
abundance-
from abundance
to selfishness-
from
selfishness to complacency-
from
complacency to apathy-
from apathy to
dependence-
from dependency back again into bondage.
Sir Alex Fraser Tyler: (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian
“How well a civilization protects its children, its elderly and animals is the single greatest mirror of its self-image and an indicator of its ascent or decline.” - Rising Serpent
"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt". - H L Mencken
“The history of civilization is largely the history of weapons”. George Orwell.
"You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way." - Will Rogers
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) WWII Supreme Allied Commander of the Southwest Pacific, Supreme United Nations Commander
“There is no social engineering that can radically renovate a civilization and change its character, and at the same time keep it going, for civilization is an affair of the human spirit, and the direction of the human spirit cannot be reset by means that are, after all, mechanical. The best thing is to follow the order of nature, and let a moribund civilization simply rot away, and indulge what hope one can that it will be followed by one that is better. This is the course that nature will take with such a civilization anyway, in spite of anything we do or do not do. Revolts, revolutions, dictatorships, experiments and innovations in political practice, all merely mess up this process and make it a sadder and sorrier business than it need be. They are only so much machinery, and machinery will not express anything beyond the intentions and character of those who run it.” – Albert Jay Nock
"Civilization is the lamb’s skin in which barbarism masquerades." - Thomas Bailey Aldrich
"In the crowd, herd, or gang, it is a mass-mind that operates—which is to say, a mind without subtlety, a mind without compassion, a mind, finally, uncivilized." - Robert Lindner
'The central question is whether the wonderfully diverse and gifted assemblage of human beings on this earth really knows how to run a civilization." - Adlai Stevenson
"If we are to preserve civilization, we must first remain civilized." - Louis St. Laurent
"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world." -- Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917) French journalist, art critic, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright. Source: Torture Garden, "The Mission," Chapter 8 (1899 - Le Jardin des supplices)
"The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself": - Robert Ingersoll
“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.” - Rousseau
“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.” Wendell Berry
“Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said. We are at our best when we serve others.” Credit: Ira Byock Here lies the drama of the story https://allgoodthinking.com/arhive/4901/
No comments:
Post a Comment