Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.

Revolution is the larva of civilization.

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

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

There certainly have been a lot of changes, although they come in such gradations that most people have either forgotten, or, if they're too young, they never knew about them in the first place.

Civilization is not a spontaneous generation with any race or nation known to history, but the torch to be handed down from race to race from age to age.

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

Martin Luther King said it was time to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of human civilization. I don't think anyone is calling Martin Luther King a New Age woo-woo.

Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence - whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.

A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

Historically - when you look at how America has evolved, typically we make progress on race relations in fits and starts. We make some progress, and then there's maybe some slippage.

Civilization may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws.

for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.

Civilizations evolve over time, and most scholars of civilization, including people like Carol Quigley, argue that they go through periods of warring states, and eventually evolve into a universal state.

A nation may be ever so civilized and yet lack wisdom.

Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change.

With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes.

The foundation for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took courage to question all things and made 'knowledge and understanding' the foundation upon which to create a more reasonable and sensible society of human beings.

It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.

Not that the moderns are born with more wit than their predecessors, but, finding the world better furnished at their coming into it, they have more leisure for new thoughts, more light to direct them, and more hints to work upon.

The measure of progress of civilization is the progress of the people.

Liberty built civilization. It can rebuild civilization.

The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past.

Revolutions are like the most noxious dungheaps, which bring into life the noblest vegetables.

One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.