Civilization Issues Quotes & Sayings

When they come to chronicle the decline of this civilization," he said, "they're going to wonder why we were debating flag burning, abortion, and broccoli eating instead of the fundamental issues of how we live and use the environment. — James Howard Kunstler

The Dreaming is always; forever ... it's always happening, and us mob, we're part of it, all the time, everywhere, and every-when too. — Kate Constable

Dick Clark will be truly missed. We will carry on his legacy every New Year's Eve. — Fergie

Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in the bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles. Economy uber alles. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and riving an entire civilization insane. Don't spill the Coca-Cola, boys, and keep those monthly payments coming. — Tom Robbins

To win our races, we will dare! The enemy may try every means to stop us, but look, we won't care! — Israelmore Ayivor

Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. — Tom Shales

There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. ... I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization. — Steven Weinberg

But if America recalls for a moment what Europe has meant to her and still means to her, what Europe, the mother of art and of knowledge, in spite of everything, still is and still will be, will she not reject these counsels of indifference and isolation, and interest herself in what may prove decisive issues for the progress and civilization of all mankind? — John Maynard Keynes

A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death — Robert M. Hutchins

For a nation to be truly transformed, there must be movements, civil societies, NGOs that are spread all across the land to educate people on the issues of Personal Responsibility. If a nation or rather active citizens of a nation could successfully launch such campaigns and a good percentage of the populace begin to live by the principles of Personal Responsibility, which is "don't blame others", think of what you can do to fix it. Such a nation would cross the huddle of civilization in a record time. — Sunday Adelaja

A delegate shout out from the floor: "Peonage, Anti-Lynch Bill, poll tax, these are our issues. They are the most controversial issues in American life, and some of us will have to die for them! Yes, we want to join with the CIO! We cannot stop for controversy!" And there in the faces of my people I saw strength. There with the whites in the audience I saw the positive forces of civilization and the best guarantee of America's future. — Ralph Ellison

With all these occurrences of death facing me, I thought about issues of freedom. If government projects the idea that we, as people inhabiting this particular land mass, have freedom, then for the rest of our lives we will go out and find what appear to be the boundaries and smack against them like a heart against the rib cage. If we reveal boundaries in the course of our movements, then we will expose the inherent lie in the use of the word freedom. I want to keep breathing and moving until I arrive at a place where motion and strength and relief intersect. I don't know what's ahead of me in the course of my life and this civilization. I just don't feel I have reached the necessary things inside my history that would ease the pressure in my skull and in my future and in my present. It is exhausting, living in a population where people don't speak up if what they witness doesn't directly threaten them. — David Wojnarowicz

Trilateralists look forward to a pseudo postnational age in which social, economic, and political values originating in the trilatleral regions are transformed into universal values. Expanding networks of like-minded governmental officials, businessmen, and technocrats - elite products of Western civilization - are to carry out national and international policy formation. Functionally specific institutions with 'more technical focus, and lesser public awareness' [italics mine] are best suited for addressing international issues in the trilateral model. Trilateralists call this decision making process 'piecemeal functionalism.' No comprehensive blueprints would be proposed and debated, but bit and bit the overall trilateral design would take shape. Its 'functional' components are to be adopted in more or less piecemeal fashion, lessening the chance people will grasp the overall scheme and organize resistance. — Holly Sklar

Looking back on my life, I wish I'd stepped forward and made a fool of myself more often when I was younger - because when you do, you find out you can do it. — William K. Sessions

Islam is a civilization that is fractured linguistically, ethnically, sectarian-wise, as ours is. What bin Laden has done, though, is to identify a number of issues that are tangible and visceral for Muslims. His indictment list of Western support for Arab tyranny, our ability to keep oil prices too low - at least until recently - our occupation of the Arabian Peninsula. — Michael Scheuer

It's only been in the past two generations that we truly understood the impact our civilization has had on the natural world. To our credit as a species, we have turned this obscure scientific fact about carbon cycles into one of the most important political issues of the 21st century. — Annalee Newitz

The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society - we are on the eve of universal change. — Eugene V. Debs

The real issues are whether the power of Western Civilization, as God has permitted it to flower in our own beloved lands, shall defy and defeat Communism; whether the rule of men who shoot their prisoners, enslave their citizens, and deride the dignity of man, shall displace the rule of those to whom the individual and his individual rights are sacred; whether we are to survive with God's hand to guide and lead us, or to perish in the dead existence of a Godless world. — T.R. Fehrenbach

So successful has the ideological-political-cultural purge been executed that it is hard indeed to find vigorous liberals, and no energetic, coherent and cogent leftists at all can find expression in our controlled media and educational systems. Forget about wholesale culture- or civilization-critics like Marxists. Universities have to be purged of any "radicalism" that can see through to the roots of issues and pathologies, for the same reasons that workers have to have nascent unions aborted among them and contrarian newspapers and media have to be starved of advertising. — Kenny Smith

The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability. — Ernst Mayr

There are times when external circumstances can overwhelm us, and we do things we never thought. If you're not aware that this can happen, you can be seduced by evil. We need inoculations against our own potential for evil. We have to acknowledge it. Then we can change it. — Philip Zimbardo

If a minister wants to be a man among men he need only to stop creating devotion to abstract ideals which every one accepts in theory and denies in practice, and to agonize about their validity and practicability in the social issues which he and others face in our present civilization. — Reinhold Niebuhr

The solution to women's issues can only be achieved in a free and democratic society in which human energy is liberated, the energy of both women and men together. Our civilization is called human civilization and is not attributed only to men or women. — Tawakkol Karman

Civil confusions often spring from trifles but decide great issues. — Aristotle.

There are parts of New Zealand that I absolutely fell in love with that I will miss going back to, but I kind of think that is the part that can continue and will continue on. I don't imagine I'll stop going back to New Zealand, because I feel part of the fabric there, really. — Andy Serkis

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