Advanced Civilization Quotes & Sayings

It's worth remembering that all technology leaves a footprint. For example, our own technology is leaving a footprint in terms of global warming, which could be detected from a long way away. One assumes that a very advanced civilization that has been around maybe millions and millions of years would have an even bigger footprint that might extend beyond its planet to its immediate astronomical environment. — Paul Davies

The Italian Revolution was fought first of all to obtain the liberty and unity of the nation, and then, with that achieved, to join the freest and most advanced nations in inaugurating a new era of peace, justice, and joint cooperation in the work of civilization. — Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

Writing of only one small part of the broader problem, namely the single-minded pursuit of individualistic 'rights,' [Don] Feder is not wrong to conclude:

Absent a delicate balance--rights and duties, freedom and order--the social fabric begins to unravel. The rights explosion of the past three decades has taken us on a rapid descent to a culture without civility, decency, or even that degree of discipline necessary to maintain an advanced industrial civilization. Our cities are cesspools, our urban schools terrorist training camps, our legislatures brothels where rights are sold to the highest electoral bidder. — D. A. Carson

In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours. — Carl Sagan

By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any student of early culture proposing that the crude contemporary art of the early Babylonians is the product of a civilization earlier than that of the Nile. — James Henry Breasted

We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket. — George Carlin

Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization ... — Greg Bear

What but education has advanced us beyond the condition of our indigenous neighbors? And what chains them to their present state of barbarism and wretchedness but a bigoted veneration for the supposed superlative wisdom of their fathers and the preposterous idea that they are to look backward for better things and not forward, longing, as it should seem, to return to the days of eating acorns and roots rather than indulge in the degeneracies of civilization? — Thomas Jefferson

Now add in deaths from old age and disease and expand that to a global scale. Please imagine the sanitary conditions in those underdeveloped regions of the raging tropics and subtropics, and those places where there are neither medical facilities nor doctors. In advanced countries, heart disease resulting from intemperate living and cancer due to air pollution are deadly new epidemics caused by the advance of civilization. Every year, about eight hundred thousand of Japan's one hundred million people will die - a number rivaling that of the total population of its outlying cities and towns. Fifty million people will die worldwide, out of a global population of three billion - a number about equal to the population of England. That's what life is like for the human race. — Sakyo Komatsu

The quipu is significant because it dispels the notion that mathematics flourishes only after a civilization has developed writing; however, societies can reach advanced states without ever having developed written records. — Clifford A. Pickover

I pull out my laptop, which is probably the most advanced piece of technology that has ever crossed the threshold of Lapin's lair, and set it up on a stack of heavy books, all from the Wayback-list. The shiny MacBook looks like a hapless alien trying to blend in with the quiet stalwarts of human civilization I crack it open - glowing alien guts revealed! - and cue the visualization as Lapin crosses the room with two cups in two saucers. — Robin Sloan

It would take a civilization far more advanced than ours, unbelievably advanced, to begin to manipulate negative energy to create gateways to the past. But if you could obtain large quantities of negative energy - and that's a big "IF" - then you could create a time machine that apparently obeys Einstein's equation and perhaps the laws of quantum theory. — Michio Kaku

For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory. — Werner Herzog

Our idea of what constitutes social good has advanced with the procession of the ages, from those desperate times when just to keep body and soul together was an achievement, to the great present when "good" includes an agreeable, stable civilization accessible to all, the opportunity of each to develop his particular genius and the privilege of mutual usefulness. — Frances Perkins

Statistically it's a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they're so advanced they're even doing interstellar travel. I believe it's possible they even came here. — Story Musgrave

There were many stages to the Atlantean civilization. During the later stages, scientists became involved with advanced particle physics. In particular they were interested in reverse gravity fields. — Frederick Lenz

The Socratic maxim that the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom has profound significance for our understanding of society. Most of the advantages of social life, especially in the more advanced forms that we call "civilization" rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in the pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he has himself acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy. — Bill Gates

It is a fact that we are an ancient civilization and that up to the medieval times we were among the most advanced civilizations. The putrefaction of our civilization perhaps set in a good thousand years ago, from which time our contribution to the world went steadily downhill. But then, a glorious past can hardly be a consolation for a sorry present. That the Indus Valley civilization at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa had glorious town planning over 2000 years ago is cold consolation for our wretched present-day cities, towns and villages. While other civilizations have gone on to build upon their past, we are merely living off it and, what is more, we have been doing it for over a thousand years! — V. Raghunathan

Cardinal Arithmetics is much older than Number Theory. People used to exchange things way before there were numbers. Expressing numbers like 762 is already a sign of a very advanced civilization. — Saharon Shelah

The possibility of reduced-time interstellar travel either by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations at present or ourselves in the future, is not fundamentally constrained by physical principles. — Harold E. Puthoff

There will be no room, here, for the smug myopia which views American civilization as the final solution to all world problems; which recommends our institutions for universal adoption and turns away with contempt from the serious study of the institutions of peoples whose civilizations may seem to us to be materially less advanced. — George F. Kennan

How different conditions would be today in the Middle East, how much saner and safer the entire earth might be, had those Christians not defiled a civilization too advanced for their arrogant little minds to understand. — Tom Robbins

We have seen and do see the type of evil that is within human civilization, and the Holocaust took place in European history during an advanced state of technology and form of civilization, only to become an event in that history that questioned what civilization actually means. — Laszlo Nemes

Advanced technology does not always promise a more intelligent civilization. On the contrary, the more the common people rely on technology to do their thinking and solving for them, the less practice there is left for their own brains. — Criss Jami

This unique strategy that the advanced primates created, the strategy of using language to bind time, is what the process we call 'civilization' has been all about. — Terence McKenna

The tendency of an advanced civilization is in truth monarchy. — Benjamin Disraeli

The chance of receiving a signal from a civilization exactly as advanced as we are should be minuscule. If they were even a little behind us, they would lack the technological capability to communicate with us at all. So the most likely signal would come from a civilization much more advanced. — Carl Sagan

Advanced weaponry, victories in battle and space travel do not an advanced species or civilization make. — Christina Engela

The key is the Internet. The United States is by far the most advanced country in this new digital culture, so we have to be there. The Internet is the heart of this new civilization, and telecommunications are the nervous system, or circulatory system. — Carlos Slim

I think [contacting an alien civilization] would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low. — Stephen Hawking

I think we overrate ourselves in terms of our abilities and capacities. I mean, just because you can build a really swell bridge doesn't, to my way of thinking, mean that you're an advanced civilization. — George Carlin

The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. that It has not been accepted, because we've been in an anthropocentric era. — Story Musgrave

No matter where we are or how advanced we think we are, there are elemental issues of our civilization that stories help us work through. — Christian Camargo

At this most crucial time in the course of evolution we are all faced with the appalling fact that we may, at any moment, destroy our precious material lives and our wonderful little earth through advanced technological means. With the advance of civilization has developed the ghastly power to destroy all of humanity at the push of a button. We are now on the verge of destroying ourselves utterly from the face of the earth! We have become mere slaves to subhuman types of destructive thinking and action! We are out of control in every direction! More than any other time on earth we are all faced with the potential dangers of political anarchy and ruin, and we are all exposed to the terrific possibility of a Third World War, more hideous than any other war in the history of our planet. What we do at this most crucial time will determine the destinies of humanity for many generations, even centuries, to come. — David Cherubim

The walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome stride toward the longed-for millennium. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Atlantis was a highly evolved civilization where the sciences and arts were far more advanced than one might guess. Atlantis was technologically advanced in genetic engineering, computer science, inter-dimensional physics, and artistically developed with electronic music and crystal art forms. — Frederick Lenz

The Americans of the United States stand in precisely the same position with regard to the peoples of South America as their fathers, the English, occupy with regard to the Italians, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and all those nations of Europe which receive their articles of daily consumption from England, because they are less advanced in civilization and trade. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Who could deny that privacy is a jewel? It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal teepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need's sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place. — Phyllis McGinley

Once upon a time, there was a civilization in the eastern side of the world. It was one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet that existed during that time.
This civilization was the glorious Indus valley civilization. No, I am not talking about India. I am talking about the land of greatness that got lost in time. Today, in the same geographical location of that great civilization, we have a piece of earth, which is known as "India". But do not mistake it to be the same glorious land that existed thousands of years ago, along with other magnificent civilizations, such as the Greeks, the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians etc. — Abhijit Naskar

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling in America, as it has done in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced societies. Supernatural faith increasingly belongs to the Third World. The First World is entering the long-predicted Secular Age, when science and knowledge dominate. The change promises to be another shift of civilization, like past departures of the era of kings, the time of slavery, the Agricultural Age, the epoch of colonialism, and the like. Such cultural transformations are partly invisible to contemporary people, but become obvious in retrospect. — James A. Haught

And he knew something else as a social evolutionist that he might stress someday in his 'Every Change Is for the Worse' should he ever find time to write it: Gold knew that the most advanced and penultimate stage of a civilization was attained when chaos masqueraded as order, and he knew we were already there. — Joseph Heller

The Chinese had first learned of the Roman Empire in 139 B.C., when the emperor Wudi had sent an envoy, Zhang Qian, past the deserts to seek allies to the west. Zhang Qian traveled for twelve years to what is now Turkistan and back and reported on the astounding discovery that there was a fairly advanced civilization to the west. In 104 B.C. and 102 B.C., Chinese armies reached the area, a former Greek kingdom called Sogdiana with its capital in Samarkand, where they met and defeated a force partly composed of captive Roman soldiers. — Mark Kurlansky

What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the Greeks? — Jean-Baptiste Say

The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization ... Such war-making weapons should be developed - but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation — Thomas A. Edison

By the time that the war came to an end, British society was generally inclined to reject the idealistic case for imperialism (that it would extend the benefits of advanced civilization to a backward region) as quixotic, and the practical case for it (that it would be of benefit to Britain to expand her empire) as untrue. — David Fromkin

What is called Western Civilization is in an advanced state of decomposition, and another Dark Ages will soon be upon us, if, indeed, it has not already begun. With the Media, especially television, governing all our lives, as they indubitably do, it is easily imaginable that this might happen without our noticing ... by accustoming us to the gradual deterioration of our values. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Even in an advanced stage of civilization, there is always a tendency to prefer those parts of literature which favor ancient prejudices, rather than those which oppose them; and in cases where this tendency is very strong, the only effect of great learning will be to supply the materials which may corroborate old errors and confirm old superstitions. In our time such instances are not uncommon; and we frequently meet with men whose erudition ministers to their ignorance, and who, the more they read the less they know. — Henry Thomas Buckle

Being a noninvasive advanced civilization
was the biggest mistake of Batak Kingdom. — Toba Beta

Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization-the him night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and best. — Ross Turnbull

Several days in a row we sighted groups of metallic, saucer-shaped vehicles at great altitudes over the base Germany, 1951 and we tried to get close to them, but they were able to change direction faster than our fighters. I do believe UFOs exist and that the truly unexplained ones are from some other technically advanced civilization. — Gordon Cooper

Advanced civilization: one without advanced technology. — Marty Rubin

It seems to me far more likely that an advanced civilization would communicate inter dimensionally and telepathically. — Terence McKenna

People usually feel funny, smile and laugh when I tell them
about my strong belief in the very existence of prehistoric
advanced technology and great civilizations of wilier races.
I just can't wait to see their faces at time the truth is revealed. — Toba Beta