Greek Civilization Quotes

What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the [Ancient] Greeks?

How can any educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science.

The superiority of the Greeks seems not so much the result of climate and society, as of the simplicity of their end and the uniformity of their means.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than the single book of Psalms. Greece had all that this world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise blossomed in Palestine alone.

In the world over, the very name of our country is immediately associated with the Parthenon.

First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we’re entering the Age of the Ass.

In the Making Of book ["300"] there's a guy named Victor Davis Hanson who is a a frickin genius. He's a Greek historian and we showed him the movie because I wanted him to write a forward to the Making Of book. I was a little nervous to be honest, because I wasn't sure how he'd react.

I think the Swedish Academy wished to manifest its solidarity with the living spirit of Greece today.

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.

I love Greek history. I love Roman history.

Without Greece, it is not possible to preserve the integrity of the European phenomenon.

From Architecture down to the Zodiac, every science worthy of the name was imported by the Greeks

Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.

But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set.

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.

And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them.

There are two great centers of Hellenism. Athens is the capital of the Kingdom. Constantinople is the great capital, the City, the dream and hope of all Greeks.

I'm a proud Greek. I carry my Hellenism like a badge of merit.

During this period the Arab world became an intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education; the Abbasids championed the cause of knowledge and established the House of Wisdom (Bait-ul-Hikmat) at Baghdad, where both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars sought to translate and gather all the world's knowledge into Arabic. The Arabs displayed a remarkable capacity of assimilating the scientific knowledge of the civilizations they had overrun. Many classic works of antiquity that might otherwise have been lost were translated into Arabic and Persian and later in turn translated into Turkish, Hebrew and Latin. During this period the Arab world was a collection of cultures which put together, synthesized and significantly advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Byzantine and Phoenician civilizations.

My point is, as civilization is progressing, Mosaic law came down from the mountain, was handed to civilization, it emerged through the Greek civilization as the Greeks were developing their Age of Reason. And we're talking about the foundation of Western Civilization, and almost concurrently with that, Roman law was emerging as well.

The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.

The center of Western culture is Greece, and we have never lost our ties with the architectural concepts of that ancient civilization.

Greek is the morning land of languages, and has the freshness of early dew in it which will never exhale.

Now we already know that the white supremacist Western scholars are going to object and oppose any evidence that shows an Afrikan influence on Greek civilization, or any other part of Europe. Their basic premise is to give Afrikan people credit for nothing