Advanced Civilization Quotes

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

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

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

Advanced civilization: one without advanced technology. ~ Marty Rubin

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

But when the class that monopolizes wealth and arms embodies its power in a centralized bureaucracy and an irresistible standing army, we get a despotism in its worst form - namely, a barbarous and primitive system of government that has the instruments of an advanced civilization at its disposal, a yoke of iron which is applied by rough and reckless hands and which is very hard to break, since it has been steeled and tempered by practical artisans. ~ Gaetano Mosca

Many peoples practiced agriculture, but they were never obsessed by the delusion that what they were doing was *right*, that everyone in the entire world had to practice agriculture, that every last square yard of the planet had to be devoted to it...

If they got tired of being agriculturalists, if they found they didn't like where it was leading them in their particular adaptation, they were *able* to give it up. They didn't say to themselves, 'Well, we've got to keep going at this even if it kills us, because its the *right* way to live.' For example, there was once a people who constructed a vast network of irrigation canals in order to farm the deserts of what is now southeastern Arizona. They maintained these canals for three thousand years and built a fairly advanced civilization, but in the end they were free to say, 'This is a toilsome and unsatisfying way to live, so to hell with it.' They simply walked away from the whole thing and put it so totally out of mind that we don't even know what they called themselves. The only name we have for them is the one the Pima Indians gave them: Hohokam--those who vanished.

But it's not going to be this easy for the Takers. It's going to be hard as hell for them to give it up, because what they're doing is *right*... Giving it up would mean that all along they'd been *wrong*. It would mean they'd *never* known how to rule the world. It would mean relinquishing their pretensions to godhood.... It would mean ~ Daniel Quinn

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

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

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Physicists then tried to calculate the amount of negative matter or energy necessary to propel a starship. The latest results indicate that the amount required is equivalent to the mass of the planet Jupiter. This means that only a very advanced civilization will be able to use negative matter or energy to propel their starships, if it is possible at all. (However, it is possible that the amount of negative matter or energy necessary to go faster than light could drop, because the calculations depend on the geometry and size of the warp bubble or wormhole.)

Star Trek gets around this inconvenient hurdle by postulating that a rare mineral called the dilithium crystal is the essential component of a warp drive engine. Now we know that "dilithium crystals" may be a fancy way of saying "negative matter or energy. ~ Michio Kaku

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

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

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

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

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

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

To burn a city, there is needed only a child or a madman; but to rebuild it, architects, workmen, money, and especially time, will be needed.

Those who are content to corrupt ancient institutions, while at the same time preserving the exterior forms, have done as much evil to the human race. ~ Joseph De Maistre

About Jews:
The phenomenon of why Jews have kept the unanimity of a distinctive culture is because combination of the persecution and specific Jewish state of mind gave a new quality of the advanced survival. What I mean by that is not only a survival but against all the odds, making progress in any area of activities: arts, business, science, politics, etc. ~ Leo Pevsner

We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom, to the effect that we are most free when we are bound. But not just any way of being bound will suffice; what matters is the character of our binding. The one who would like to be an athlete, but who is unwilling to discipline his body by regular exercise and by abstinence, is not free to excel on the field or the track. His failure to train rigorously and to live abstemiously denies him the freedom to go over the bar at the desired height, or to run with the desired speed and endurance. With one concerted voice the giants of the devotional life apply the same principle to the whole of life with the dictum: Discipline is the price of freedom. ~ Elton Trueblood

At first glance, this seems an improbable scenario due to both the Martians' and Emily Dickinson's dispositions. Dickinson was a recluse who didn't meet anybody, preferring to hide upstairs when neighbors came to call and to float notes down on them.14 Various theories have been advanced for her self-imposed hermitude, including Bright's Disease, an unhappy love affair, eye trouble, and bad skin. T. L. Mensa suggests the simpler theory that all the rest of the Amherstonians were morons.15 None of these explanations would have made it likely that she would like Martians any better than Amherstates, and there is the added difficulty that, having died in 1886, she would also have been badly decomposed. ~ Connie Willis

The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide. ~ T. S. Eliot

Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization. ~ Will Durant

I speak of the current civilization and I consider her not as a symbol but as victim-victim, really, of the commercialization, of the falsification of this real world. That is my theme. ~ Ernesto Cardenal

Louie found the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow porcession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. In his head, he could roam anywhere, and he found that his mind was quick and clear, his imagination unfettered and supple. He could stay with a thought for hours, turning it about. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

I think one of the big errors people are making right now is thinking that old-style businesses will be obsolete, when actually they will be an important part of this new civilization. Some retail groups are introducing e-commerce and think that the bricks are no longer useful. But they will continue to be important. ~ Carlos Slim

A civilization was the means by which too many people could live together despite their mutual hatred. ~ Steven Erikson

It was all a monstrous payment for courageous fiction, a gratuity in return for the one reality of human life--illusion. We gave them a feeling of hope and profit; we sent a tidal wave of water and confidence into their stranded affairs...Civilization is possible only through confidence, so that we can bank our money and go unarmed about the streets. ~ H.G.Wells

The real triumph of civilization is the extent to which coercion is banished from human relations. ~ Anthony Gregory

I'm already in the late stages of advanced detachment where my mother is concerned. With a little practice I could feel that way about everyone. ~ Susan Juby

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. ~ Christopher Hitchens

If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet? ~ Richard Dawkins

The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure. ~ Walter Lippmann

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee

in the days of civilization there were many men. They did not think much about the world outside of them because man seemed to be greatly stronger than all that outside world. So they thought mostly about how they could get the better of other people, and so they were likely not to trust each other altogether, not even brother and brother. But now, he thought, when men are very few, each of these young men wanders freely with his bow in hand and his dog at heel, but needs his comrade close at call. ~ George R. Stewart

I drove an electric car for seven years because of its advanced technology, not because I have any concerns about energy resources. I have none at all. And when environmentalists say that global warming is dangerous, unprecedented and that we'll have a tipping point for atmospheric carbon dioxide, it's just nonsense. ~ Burt Rutan

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

Not long ago Congress voted, with much patriotic rhetoric, for the imposition of severe penalties upon anyone presuming to burn the flag of the United States. Yet the very Congressmen who passed this law are responsible, by acts of commission or omission, for burning, polluting, and plundering the territory that the flag is supposed to represent. Therein, they exemplified the peculiar and
perhaps fatal fallacy of civilization: the confusion of symbol with reality. ~ Alan W. Watts

In all my teaching I have watched carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and I am convinced that there are few single agencies of civilization that are more far-reaching. ~ Booker T. Washington

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own? ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

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. ~ Will Durant

If they are not an advanced race from the future, are we dealing instead with a parallel universe, another dimension where there are other human races living, and where we may go at our expense, never to return to the present? From that mysterious universe, are higher beings projecting objects that can materialize and dematerialize at will? Are UFOS "windows" rather than "objects"? ~ Jacques Vallee

Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man? ~ Darrel Ray

He judges the present time in virtue of a meta-historical fact, and the incursion of this event into the present is the only force capable of throwing off the dead weight of social and political institutions which are gradually crushing the life out of our present civilization. ~ Jacques Ellul

If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature. ~ Ronald Wright

Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them. Some feel that they inhabit a no-man's-land between two worlds. They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purpose have not merged. ~ Eckhart Tolle

I go forward slowly, dead, and my vision is no longer mine, it's nothing: it's only the vision of the human animal who, without wanting, inherited Greek culture, Roman order, Christian morality, and all the other illusions that constitute the civilization in which I feel.
Where can the living be? ~ Fernando Pessoa

To be clear, civilization is not the same as society. Civilization is a specific, hierarchical organization based on 'power over.' Dismantling civilization, taking down that power structure, does not mean the end of all social order. It should ultimately mean more justice, more local control, more democracy, and more human rights, not less. ~ Derrick Jensen

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals. ~ Friedrich Hayek

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance. ~ E. M. Forster

One could judge the degree of civilization of a country by the social and political position of its women ~ Charles Fourier

Advanced Buddhist Yoga is the art of altering your karmic patterns. ~ Frederick Lenz

During my span of life science has become a matter of public concern and the l'art pour l'art standpoint of my youth is now obsolete. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, and scientific work means contributing to its development. Science in our technical age has social, economic, and political functions, and however remote one's own work is from technical application it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions which determine the fate of the human race. I realized this aspect of science in its full impact only after Hiroshima. ~ Max Born

It's not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, it's that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is. ~ Nick Harkaway

Induction makes you feel guilty for getting something out of nothing, and it is artificial, but it is one of the greatest ideas of civilization. ~ Herbert Wilf

Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages. ~ Isaac Mayer Wise

A very civilized thing, glass - almost an index of civilization. When civilization retreats, it leaves behind broken glass. ~ John Derbyshire

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private. ~ Mahatma Gandhi