Civilizations Quotes

Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.

Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.

It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religious in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap.

We have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace, and when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there's only us, because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country. So, we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations.

The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future

All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.

If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.

Of course, with agriculture came the first big civilizations, the first cities built of mud and brick, the first empires. And it was the administers of these empires who began hiring people to keep track of the wheat and sheep and wine that was owed and the taxes that was owed on them by making marks; marks on clay in that time.

If the lives of men can be measured in terms of years, ideologies in decades, and nations in centuries, then the unit measuring civilizations, born of the interaction among peoples, would be the millennium.

This is not a clash of civilizations or religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based upon force. There is indeed a fundamental antagonism here, but one that points past the specter of America (which is perhaps the epicenter, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalization) and the specter of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either) to triumphant globalization battling against itself.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

Civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.

What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they ... could ... invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—–the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. ... That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended—–civilizations are built up—–excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few years, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans.

Our world, like a charnel-house, is strewn with the detritus of dead epochs.

By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished.

Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists on the mind of the general public.

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers created the 'Fertile Crescent' where some of the first civilizations emerged. Today they are immensely important resources, politically as well as geographically.

A large civilization yields large profits [earnings] because of' the large amount of [available] labor which is the cause of profit.

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. ... Next to the blessed sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.

What leaders have to remember is that somewhere under the somnolent surface is the creature that builds civilizations, the dreamer of dreams, the risk taker. And remembering that, the leader must reach down to the springs that never dry up, the ever-fresh springs of the human spirit.

Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case... we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two.

We seem at, the present time to have arrived at the acute stage of the colonial fever which during the last three or four years has afflicted the various powers of Europe. Germany is vying with France, England with both, in the haste to seize upon “unoccupied” countries, and to establish “protectorates” – the cant diplomatic for incomplete annexation – over uncivilized peoples.