Cultural Development Quotes

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past

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 is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

Culture is not made up but something that evolves which is human.

Fitness for self-government is not a God-given, natural right, but comes to a race only through the slow growth of centuries.

Humans have always used our intelligence and creativity to improve our existence. After all, we invented the wheel, discovered how to make fire, invented the printing press and found a vaccine for polio.

World history is the history of the great cultures.

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.

The only very marked difference between the average civilized man and the average savage is that the one is gilded and the other is painted.

the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

What makes us human is that we ask questions. All the animals have interests, instincts and conceptions. All the animals frame for themselves an idea of the world in which they live. But we alone question our surroundings.

When I contemplate the immense advances in sciences and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches

The civilized man is a larger mind but a more imperfect nature than the savage.

Civilization never stands still; if in one country it is falling back, in another it is changing, evolving, becoming more complicated, bringing fresh experience to body and mind, breeding new desires, and exploiting Nature's cupboard for their satisfaction.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity.

Even the lowest of the Hindus, the Pariah, has less of the brute in him than a Briton in a similar social status. This is the result of an old and excellent religious civilization. This evolution to a higher spiritual state is possible only through discipline and education.

Let a hundred flowers blossom and let one hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.

...men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.