Gertrude Stein Quotes

We have to go into the past to go further and further into the future.

Once Europe existed in a Dark Age and Islam carried the torch of learning. Now we Muslims live in a Dark age.

Person after person has said to me in these last few days that this new world we face terrifies them. I can understand how that feeling would arise unless one believes that men are capable of greatness beyond their past achievements.... The time now calls for mankind as a whole to rise to great heights. We must have faith or we die.

My government's aim for Fiji is not to return to where we once were but to journey forward together to a place we have not yet been

While the United States of today is not the United States of yesterday there are unmistakable indications that she is also not the United States of tomorrow.

Because civilizations are finite, in the life of each of them there comes a moment when the center ceases to hold. What keeps them at such times from disintegration is not legions but language.

Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

They offer me neither food nor drink - intellectual nor spiritual consolation... [Conservatism] leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard, it is not safe, or calculated to preserve from the spoilers that degree of civilization which we have already attained.

Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards

India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.

A false reverence for past history amid its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy for a peoples’ decay.

It’s hard letting go in the past when there are no firm handholds in the future.

We are not primitive. We live differently to you, but we do not live exactly like our grandparents did, nor do you. Were your ancestors 'primitive'? I don't think so. We respect our ancestors. We love our children. This is the same for all people. We are not primitive. We live differently to you, but we do not live exactly like our grandparents did, nor do you. Were your ancestors 'primitive'? I don't think so. We respect our ancestors. We love our children. This is the same for all people.

I am well convinced that Aerial Navigation will form a most prominent feature in the progress of civilization

A certain degree of progress from the rudest state in which man is found,—a dweller in caves, or on trees, like an ape, a cannibal, an eater of pounded snails, worms, and offal,—a certain degree of progress from this extreme is called Civilization.

If progress is to be steady we must have long term guides extending far ahead.

The further backward we look, the further forward we are likely to see.

What this bill will do is take our civilization back 900 years.

China still faces mountains of problems. Some are historical legacies. Others might be the byproducts of our rapid development…. We still have a long way to go. Maybe it’s even good for individuals or nations to have a certain sense of insecurity. This can turn into motivation to work hard.

… economic systems ... have never arranged themselves by themselves. It is men who do the ordering according to their attitudes, desires and understanding of things. Changes take place, not independent of man's will, but on account of man's wills. Civilization has progressed by man's interference with material conditions.

We live in a quickly changing world, therefore we must foretell developments, and reforms should respond to these changes

If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.

We have worked nearly 30 years, but the lives of the Tibetans have not improved.

More and more, as civilization develops, we find the primitive to be essential to us. We root into the primitive as a tree roots into the earth. If we cut off the roots, we lose the sap without which we can't progress or even survive. I don't believe our civilization can continue very long out of contact with the primitive.

Many people repeat the past. I'm not interested. I prefer evolution.