Geoffrey S. Fletcher Quotes

There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture, took place for the first time.

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.

Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change.

Such manifestations I account as representing the creative leadership of the new forces of thought and appreciation which attend changes in technological pattern and therefore of the pattern of human relationships in society.

Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you're neglecting that, you're basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human.

The ability to write and read books is one of the things that transformed us as a species.

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.

We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.

The making of an Atheist implies a mental stimulation and training which brings into play the primary factors of social progress.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

If people are all the same underneath, how has society changed so fast and so radically? Life now is completely different to how it was 32,000 years ago. It's changed like that of no other species has. What's made that difference?

Writing makes you more human.

There is an idea that a mind is wasted on the arts unless it makes you good in math or science. There is some evidence that the arts might help you in math and science.

The most dynamic cities have always been immersed in the critical innovations of their time.

… the biography of mankind

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.

My theory is that hip-hop is the most advanced version of civilisation on earth, and we are here to usher the rest of humanity into the Age of Aquarius.

I try and stay in my right brain as much as I can, but my left takes over.

We've got paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.

We exist in a bizarre combination of Stone Age emotions, medieval beliefs, and god-like technology.

The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.

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

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.

Being creative is at the heart of being human and of all cultural progress.