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  • Os guerreiros de ca   na‹  o buscam mavo  rticas damas para o enlace epitala"  mico; mas antes as preferem do  ceis e facilmente troca v eis por pequeninas e vola  teis folhas de papel a que o vulgo chamara   dinheiroo 'curriculum vitae'da Civiliza c° a‹  o. The warriors here do not seek out mettlesome women for epithalamic conjunction, but prefer them docile and willing to exchange with ease their favours for those small and deliquescent leaves of paper which the masses call moneythe curriculum vitae of Civilization.

    - Ma r io de Andrade
      Macuna|  ma (O Hero  i sem nenhum cara  ter) (Macunaima, 1984), ch.9.

  • What is to prevent a daily newspaper from being made the greatest organ of social life? Books have had their daythe theatres have had their daythe temple of religion has had its day. A newspaper can be made to take the lead of all these in the great movements of human thought and of human civilisation. A newspaper can send more souls to Heaven, and save more from Hell, than all the churches or chapels in New Yorkbesides making money at the same time.

    -James Gordon, Snr Bennett
      In the NewYork Herald,19  Aug.

  • The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to oneself, has been the markof high civilisation both on the part of individuals and communities.

    - Sir Isaiah Berlin
      Four Essays on Liberty.

  • Appropriating the fruits of Christian civilisation, but rejecting the tree from which they spring.

    - Isabella married name Isabella Bishop Bird
      Unbeaten Tracks in Japan:  An  Account of  Travels on Horseback in the Interior1880 (published1885).

  • Their civilization is based on the most forthrightly materialistic value system in the history of mankind. If they see pie in the sky, they immediately start figuring out how to get it down onto the dinner table.

    - David Bonavia
    The Chinese.

  • C'est aussi de tous les arts celui qui nous a rendu le service le plus important pour la vie civile. It is also of all arts the one which has done the most to advance the cause of civilization.

    -Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
      Of cooking. Physiologie du gou"  t, pt.1, ch.27, section123 (translated by Anne Drayton,1970).

  • You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.

    -John, 1st BaronTweedsmuir Buchan
      The Power-House, ch.3,'Tells of a Midsummer Night'.

  • Civilisation is a conspiracy.

    -John, 1st BaronTweedsmuir Buchan
      The Power-House, ch.3,'Tells of a Midsummer Night'.

  • Pax Romana.Where they made a desolation they called Burke it a peace.What absolutenonsense! It was a nasty, vulgar sort of civilization, only dignified by being hidden under a lot of declensions.

    -Wilson
      Inside Mr Enderby, pt.2, ch.2.

  • America is the only country in history that miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization.

    - Georges Clemenceau
    Attributed. This has also been attributed to George Bernard Shaw.

  • The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

    - Cyril Vernon Connolly
      The Unquiet Grave, pt.2.

  • Civilization and profits go hand in hand.

    - (John) Calvin Coolidge
      Speech, NewYork, 27 Nov.

  • Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.

    -James Fenimore Cooper
      The American Democrat,'On the Disadvantages of a Monarchy'.

  • All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

    - Havelock Ellis
      Little Essays of Love and Virtue.

  • As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth.

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
      Representative Men,'Napoleon, the Man of the World'.

  • In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

    -John Robert Fowles
      The French Lieutenant's Woman, ch.10.

  • The principal taskofcivilisation, its actual raisond'e"  tre, is to defend us against nature.

    - Sigmund Freud
      Introductory Lectures.

  • What do I thinkof Western civilization? I think that it would be a good idea.

    -[great soul]
    Attributed.

  • Je  sus a pleure , Voltaire a souri; c'est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu'est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle. Jesus wept;Voltairesmiled.Of that divinetearand of that human smile the sweetness of present civilization is composed.

    -Victor Marie Hugo
      Speech on Voltaire's centenary, 30 May.

  • The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.

    -William Ralph Inge
      The End of an  Age, ch.6.

  • Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.

    -William James
      The Principles of Psychology, ch.24.

  • In order to imbue civilization with sound principles and enliven it with the spirit of the gospel, it is not enough to be illumined with the gift of faith and enkindled with the desire of forwarding a good cause. For this end it is necessary to take an active part in the various organizationsand influencethemfromwithin. And since our present age is one of outstanding scientific and technical progress and excellence, one will not be able to enter these organizations and work effectively from within unless he is scientifically competent, technically capableand skilled in the practice of his own profession.

    -PopeJohn XXIII originally Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli
      Pacem in Terris,10  Apr.

  • Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

    - HenryAlfred Kissinger
      In the NewYork Times,13 Oct.

  • It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it.

    - Ronald Arbuthnot Knox
      Let Dons Delight, ch.8.

  • I have seen the science I worshipped and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

    - Charles A(ugustus) Lindbergh
      In Time, 26 May.

  • Dessa civiliza c° a‹  o so   pode sair quem tem como fun c° a‹  o especial a de sair: a um cientista e   dada a licen c° a, a um padre e   dada a permissa‹  o. Mas na‹  o a uma mulher que nem sequer tem as garantias de um t|tulo. Only he whose special function is departure can depart from that civilization: a scientist isgiven license, a priest isgiven permission. But these are not given to a woman who does not even have the guarantee of a title.

    - Clarice Lispector
      A Paixa‹  o Segundo G.H. ( The Passion  According to G.H.).

  •    By thetest of our faith thehighest standard ofcivilization is the readiness to sacrifice for others.

    - David, 1st Earl Lloyd George (of Dwyfor)
      Speech in Queen's Hall, London, 21 Sep.

  • The fate of human civilization will depend on whether the rockets of the future carry the astronomer's telescope or a hydrogen bomb.

    - Sir (Alfred Charles) Bernard Lovell
      The Individual and the Universe.

  • We do not like the confiding, the intimate, the ingratiating, the hail-fellow-well-met, but prefer the unapproachable, the hard-bitten, the recalcitrant, the sinister, the malignant, the saturnine, the cross-grained and the cankered, and the howling wilderness to the amenities of civilization, the irascible to the affable, the prickly to the smooth.We have no damned fellow- feeling at all.

    -Grieve
      'The Dour Drinkers of Glasgow', in The American Mercury, Mar.

  • The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.

    - Norman Kingsley Mailer
      Cannibals and Christians,'Introducing Our Argument'.

  • The word 'civilization'to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing† Civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      Interview in the Paris Review, Summer.

  • To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      In the Observer, 8  Apr.

  • I am sure that the immediate abolition of the slave trade is the first, the principal, the most indispensable act of policy, of dutyand of justice the legislature of this country has to take, if it is indeed their wish to secure those important objects† For we continue to this hour a barbarous traffic in slaves, we continue it even yet, in spite of all our great and undeniable pretensions as civilisation.

    -William known as  theYounger Pitt
      Speech to the House of Commons, 2 Apr.The House did not abolish slavery until1806.

  • There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
      Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, pt.5.

  • Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
      Guide to Kulcher, pt.3, section 5, ch.20.

  • It is defiantthe desperate act of men too profoundly convinced of the rottenness of our civilization to want to save a shred of its respectability.

    - Sir Herbert Edward Read
      Catalogue of the International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London, Jun/Jul, introduction.

  • It will be a gay world. There will be lights everywhere except in the minds of men, and the fall of the last civilization will not be heard above the din.

    - Sir Herbert Edward Read
      Quoted in Hoggart andJohnston, An Idea of Europe (1987), 'Pyramids and Planes'.

  • El orbe hispano nunca se vino abajo, ni siquiera a la ca|da del imperio espan‹  ol, sino que se ha multiplicado en numerosas facetas de ensanches todav|a insospechados† No somos pueblos en estado de candor, que se deslumbren fa  cilmente con los instrumentos externos de que se acompan‹  a la cultura, sino pueblos que heredan una vieja civilizacio  n y exigen la excelencia misma de la cultura. The Hispanic world never crumbled, not even after the Spanish Empire fell, but instead has multiplied itself in broad ways that are still largely unknown† Our people are not naive and are not blinded by the external tools that go together with culture; we are rather the inheritors of an old civilization, and we demand the excellence proper to culture itself.

    - Alfonso Reyes
    Pa  ginas escogidas,'Valor de la literatura hispanoamericana' (translated as'TheValue of Hispanic American Literature').

  • You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

    -Will Rogers
      In the NewYorkTimes, 23 Dec.

  • We are fighting in the quarrel of civilization against barbarism, of liberty against tyranny.Germany has become a menace to the whole world. She is the most dangerous enemy of liberty now existing.

    -Theodore Roosevelt
      Speech at Oyster Bay, Long Island, Apr.

  • L'amour, heurtant son front aveugle a'   tous les obstacles de la civilisation. Love, knocking its blind forehead against all of civilization's obstacles.

    - Sir Sydney Samuelson
      Indiana, preface.

  • But reading is not idleness†it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      Journal entry, 4 Jan.

  • Men are the Brahmin, women the Pariahs, under our existing civilization.

    - Elizabeth ne  e  Cady Stanton
    The History ofWoman Suffrage1848^61, vol.1, ch.1, 'Preceding Causes'.

  • The saddest object in civilization, and to my mind the greatest confession of its failure, is the man who can work, who wants work, and who is not allowed to work.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
    Quoted by Lloyd Osbourne in'The Death of Stevenson', preface toTusitala edition of Weir of Hermiston (published1924).

  • Why, as civilization spreads, do outstanding men become fewer? Why, when attainments are the lot of all, do great intellectual talents become rarer? Why, when there are no longer lower classes, are there no longer upper classes? Why, when knowledge of how to rule reaches the masses, is there a lackof great abilities in the direction of society? America clearly poses these questions.But who can answer them?

    - Alexis Charles Henri Cle  rel de Tocqueville
      Translated by George Lawrence. Quoted in J P Mayer (ed) Journey toAmerica (1960).

  • From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilizationworks its miracles and civilized man isturned almost into a savage.

    - Alexis Charles Henri Cle  rel de Tocqueville
      Of Manchester. Journal entry, 2 Jul. Journeys to England and Ireland (translatedby George Lawrence andJPMayer,1958).

  • Ce serait diminuer leur importance que de croire qu'ils ne servent qu'a'   garantir la liberte  ; ils maintiennent la civilisation. It would diminish the importance [of newspapers] to believe that they only serve to guarantee freedom; they maintain civilization.

    - Alexis Charles Henri Cle  rel de Tocqueville
    ^40  De la De  mocratie en Ame  rique (Democracy in America), vol.2, pt.2, ch.6.

  •    I am convinced that the history of so-called scientific work in our famous centers of European civilization will, in a couple of hundred years, represent an inexhaustible source of laughter and sorrow for future generations. The learned men of the small western part of our European continent lived for several centuries under the illusionthatthe eternal blessed life wastheWest'sfuture. They were interested in the problem of when and where this blessed life would come.But they never thought of how they were going to make their life better.

    - Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
      What is Art? (translated byV Tchertkoff).

  • Civilisation is a movement and not a condition; a voyage and not a harbour.

    - Arnold Joseph Toynbee
    Quoted in Reader's Digest, Oct1958.

  • Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life-blood of real civilisation.

    - George Macaulay Trevelyan
      English Social History.

  • Civilization has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in the long run onlychanged the form of the pack.

    - Leon originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein Trotsky
      History of the Russian Revolution (translated by Max Eastman,1934), vol.3, pt.3.

  • Women know the damnation of charity because the habit of civilisation has always been to throw them cheap alms rather than give them good wages.

    - Dame Rebecca formerly  Cecily Isabel Fairfield West
      'The Personal ServiceAssociation:Work for Idle Hands to Do', in The Clarion,13 Dec.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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