Civilization Quotes - page 68
By an observation of an eclipse of one of Jupiter's satellites, on the night of the 25th of March, in latitude 350° 51' 30", I found that we were very near the 100th degree of longitude west from Greenwich. On the following day, therefore, we celebrated our entrance into the United States territory. Those who have never been beyond the purlieus of the land of their nativity, can form but a poor conception of the joy which the wanderer in distant climes experiences on treading once more upon his own native soil! Although we were yet far from the abodes of civilization, and further still from home, nevertheless the heart within us thrilled with exhilarating sensations; for we were again in our own territory, breathed our own free atmosphere, and were fairly out of reach of the arbitrary power which we had left behind us.
Josiah Gregg
September of the year 490 B.C. was to my mind a more cardinal moment of fate for Europe than August 1914. Western civilization...was saved in its infancy at Marathon, and ten years later by Leonidas and by the men of Salamis...had it not been for that decade there would have been nothing to prevent Eastern Europe being orientalized and the ultimate fight for the hegemony of Europe would have been left to the Persians and the Carthaginians. But for the Greeks there would have been no civilization as we know it, and we should all have been dark-skinned people with long noses...England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.
Stanley Baldwin
There is in Chinese history one case of alleged religious persecution for purely economical reasons.So, the monasteries were abolished as a strictly institutional measure. The monks were not put to the sword, or forbidden to practice and teach Buddhism. It was simply not a case of religious persecution, which is a phenomenon quite alien to the entire Chinese civilization.
Koenraad Elst
Here again there is a parallel: informed Hindus are pained by the denial of their centuries of suffering at the hands of Islam, and are likewise pained by the denial of their millennia of civilization-building, a denial which goes by the name of Aryan Invasion Theory... for Indians, the AIT likewise implies the denial of a long stretch of Indian history. The AIT denies principally the history of the Solar and Lunar dynasties and other tribes living in Aryavarta (the area from Sindh to Bihar and from the Vindhyas to Kashmir), as covered in the Flu for a period from the dawn of proto-history to the 1st millennium BC. The major motifs (epics, artistic standards, schools of philosophy) of Indian civilization are embedded in that history, which is simply denied in its long pre-1500 BC phase, and vilified as merely the cultural superstructure of an ethnic subjugation of pre-Aryans by Aryans in its post-1500 BC phase.
Koenraad Elst
But he does mention the legend of Manu Vaivasvata saving his company from the flood and sailing up the rivers of India to settle high and dry in Saptasindhu. Clearly, the origins of Vedic civilization are related to the post-Glacial flood, probably the single biggest migration trigger in human history.
Koenraad Elst
Agricultural association, which in all ages has been deemed impossible, would produce results of unbounded magnificence the rigorous demonstrations, the mathematical calculations by which these results will be verified, will not, however, prevent the picture of the future harmony and happiness which they present from repelling minds habituated to the miseries and wretchedness of our present civilization.
Charles Fourier
The true object of moral and political disquisition is pleasure or happiness.
The primary, or earliest, class of human pleasure is the pleasures of external senses.
In addition to these, man is susceptible of certain secondary pleasures, as the pleasures of intellectual feeling, the pleasures of sympathy, and the pleasures of self-approbation.
The secondary pleasures are probably more exquisite than the primary;
Or, at least,
The most desirable state of man is that in which he has access to all these sources of pleasure, and is in possession of a happiness the most varied and uninterrupted.
This state is a state of high civilization.
William Godwin
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it...
William Tecumseh Sherman
Good causes sometimes have bad consequences. Blacks, women, and other historical out-groups were right to demand equality before the law and the full respect and liberties due to any member of our civilization; but the tactics they used to "raise consciousness” have sometimes veered into the creepy and pathological, borrowing the least sane features of religious evangelism.
Eric S. Raymond
We ought to tackle the Jewish question by admitting the right of States to make eugenic experiments by weeding out any strains that they think undesirable, but insisting that they should do it as humanely as they can afford to, and not shock civilization by such misdemeanors as the expulsion and robbery of Einstein.
George Bernard Shaw
The Rhine is to-day a barrier indispensable to the safety of Western Europe-indispensable, therefore, to civilization. ... By renouncing the Rhine as a natural barrier, we should be conniving at an inconceivable, a monstrous situation. Germany would be able to continue her enterprises as though she had been victorious-the very Germany that has sent millions of human beings to death, the very Germany that planned to annihilate our country and leave her a heap of ashes, the very Germany that plotted to dominate the world by brute force-blood-stained, crime-stained Germany.
Ferdinand Foch
For the first time an oil producer country, Ecuador, where a third of the resources of the State depends on the exploitation of the above mentioned resources, resigns this income for the well-being of the whole humanity and invites the world to join efforts through a fair compensation, in order that together we lay the foundations for a more human and fair civilization.
Rafael Correa
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
Mike Jones
For the love of God, for the love of your children and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness. You are mortal men. You are capable of error. You have no right to hold in your hands-there is no one wise enough and strong enough to hold in his hands-destructive power sufficient to put an end to civilized life on a great portion of our planet.
Mike Jones
