[The US has] developed two coordinate governing classes: the one, called 'business,' building cities, manufacturing and distributing goods, and holding complete and autocratic power over the livelihood of millions; the other, called 'government,' concerned with preaching and exemplification of spiritual ideals, so caught in a mass of theory, that when it wished to move in a practical world it had to do so by means of a sub rosa political machine.
Showing posts with label Civilization Quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civilization Quotes. Show all posts
Who ordained that the few shou...
Who ordained that the few should have the land (of Britain) as a prerequisite; who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?
When you can't do something tr...
When you can't do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.
What we call progress is the e...
What we call progress is the exchange of one Nuisance for another Nuisance.
We think our civilization near...
We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.
We sit by and watch the barbar...
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.
We shall require a substantial...
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
We pass through this world but...
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.
We are so clothed in rationali...
We are so clothed in rationalization and dissemblance that we can recognize but dimly the deep primal impulses that motivate us.
We are in the first age since ...
We are in the first age since the dawn of civilization in which people have dared to think it practicable to make the benefits of civilization available to the whole human race.
We are at the very beginning o...
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
We are all afraid - for our co...
We are all afraid - for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.
To be able to fill leisure int...
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.
To be a man is to feel that on...
To be a man is to feel that one's own stone contributes to building the edifice of the world.
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