Alvin Toffler Quotes

The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.

A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it.

If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology.

We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.

This world of ours is a new world, in which the unit of knowledge, the nature of human communities, the order of society, the order of ideas, the very notions of society and culture have changed, and will not return to what they have been in the past. What is new is new, not because it has never been there before, but because it has changed in quality.

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

The machine itself has begun to do the work of revolution. The State is now generating forces that will accomplish what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves.

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another. We have to see today in light of the transition, say, from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and from agriculture to industry, and from industry to post-industry. We're in an epoch transition.

Industrial forces set in motion by steam and electricity have materially changed the structure of our civilization.

All civilizations must go through four stages: The first stage is the emergence of a new civilization and society. The second stage covers a period of growth and prosperity. Stagnation and decadence characterize the third stage where wealth can no longer increase. This brings us to a fourth stage of decline leading to the ultimate collapse. Finally, a new civilization emerges from the ashes of the previous one and another cycle is born. The conditions of the world, and of the nations do not persist in one unchanging state but are transformed with the passage of time and move from one condition to another

History is the record of human society or world civilization, of the changes that take place in the nature of that society … of all the transformations that society undergoes by its very nature.

What seems impossible today, may half a century hence have become commonplace.

I think technology and smartphones created a huge paradigm shift that we can't fully comprehend, and I think in a lot of ways things are changing faster than we can really process.

Everything is so unstable in these times of progress at any cost, and social customs and methods of life alter so rapidly, that a few years now suffice to change completely the face of usages which, at their inception, bade fair to outlive the age - so enthusiastically were they welcomed by the public.

Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.

The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.

The process by which civilization, as an abstract entity distinct from the societies in which it is embodied, dies or is reborn is a very significant one.

Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?

The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.

The rise and fall of civilizations in the long, broad course of history can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth; for not authority but aspiration is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization.

Everyone who lives in an industrialized society is obliged gradually to give up the past, but in certain countries, such as the United States and Japan, the break with the past has been particularly traumatic.

Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.