Thomas Sowell Quotes

Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate as it was a thousand years ago.

Societies advance through innovation every bit as much as economies do.

Civilizations are a matter of the mind.

As civilization advances, man grows unconscious of the primitive elements of life; he is separated from them by his perfection of material techniques.

Were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged.

It is inherent in human consciousness to improve. So there is nothing unique about a people searching for and creating ways to make their life better - all civilizations throughout history have done this. What is unique about us in America is the accelerated rate at which we continually search for novelty and progress.

Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

Civilization and profits go hand in hand.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

Civilization and religion do not necessarily move with equal pace.

Nations are liable to various revolutions in the state of their minds, and extent of their knowledge, as well as in their power and wealth ….

What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the [Ancient] Greeks?

Through writing, Homo sapiens then became the first species to preserve learning, enabling knowledge to grow, ultimately at an exponential pace. Collective learning over time then became the source of technological improvement, a process that could move much faster than evolution.

Languages evolve; ideas blend together. In computer technology, we all stand on others' shoulders.

I'm not anti-progress, obviously, but I just think progress needs to be a broader thing than just the technology we can create; it's also how we handle it and our level of awareness.

There is nothing that sets a nation back as far in civilization as prosperity.

What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos... the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.

Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.

The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.

The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end - the civilization of mankind.

History has been conceived--and with high justification in the records--as the human struggle for civilization against barbarism in different ages and places, from the beginning of human societies.