I say that almost everywhere there is beauty enough to fill a person's life if one would only be sensitive to it. But Henry says No: that broken beauty is only a torment, that one must have a whole beauty with man living in relation to it to have a rich civilization and art.... Is it because I am a woman that I accept what crumbs I may have, accept the hot-dog stands and amusement parks if I must, if the blue is bright beyond them and the sunset flushes the breasts of sea birds?
life man beauty art living sunset bright woman broken birds civilization amusement sea blue torment rich sensitive accept breasts
The late 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. They were an age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Seas or the West Indies, or better still for Paris, from which they could scatter to Majorca, Corsica, Capri or the isles of Greece. Paris itself was a modern city that seemed islanded in the past, and there were island countries, like Mexico, where Americans could feel that they had escaped from everything that oppressed them in a business civilization. Or without leaving home they could build themselves private islands of art or philosophy; or else - and this was a frequent solution - they could create social islands in the shadow of the skyscrapers, groups of close friends among whom they could live as unconstrainedly as in a Polynesian valley, live without moral scruples or modern conveniences, live in the pure moment, live gaily on gin and love and two lamb chops broiled over a coal fire in the grate. That was part of the Greenwich Village idea, and soon it was being copied in Boston, San Francisco, everywhere.
boats philosophy idea age business home art live moment city past real leaving friends fire feel shadow idealism moral south civilization pure solution escape create americans metaphorical lost-generation san-francisco social close part mexico paris modern greece love west lamb boat gin
It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.
women culture politics technology presidents work mind men faith time human thought bible religious earth problem universe intellectual civilization kings made extremism evidence creator books atheism heroic secular
It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith.. These taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.
belief diversity people faith society religion spirituality humanism religious ethics civilization beliefs concern religions agnosticism atheism worse
The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence.
belief power time religion spirituality humanism problem influence word ethics extraordinary civilization beliefs fail talk importance agnosticism atheism
The terrible error in the course of human civilization is undoubtedly the defective judgment that allowed religious authorities usurp the foundation of societal morality, in which all collective ethics of humankind must take a cause. This appalling blunder is comparable only to assigning the leper exclusive franchise to run beauty clinics in the society; this can only lead to cycles upon cycles of common infection syndrome.
beauty society religion human morality religious judgment ethics civilization run common humankind foundation error scepticism cycles atheism terrible
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
reading book quote delight civilization emerson books
In Western Civilization, our elders are books.
truth civilization western books
Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies' heads. Where they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization.
culture heroes life learning literacy literary irish civilization europe triumph exile skills signs love books
If you grew up in a rural area, you have seen how farmhouses come and go, but the dent left by cellars is permanent. There is something unbreakable in that hand-dug foundational gouge into the earth. Books are the cellars of civilization: when cultures crumble away, their books remain out of sheer stupid solidity.
earth civilization stupid left books
A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive. This book might better be compared to a loom on which it is proposed to re-weave some ravelled parts of our civilization.
book civilization machine books
They were literally inches from being buried alive in this place, millions of miles from home or any sort of civilization, where they would never be found or mourned.. And Caine continued to smile. Sweet heavens, he was completely out of his mind!
mind home smile sweet romance civilization alive place found christian
We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.
culture emotions life wisdom society names power-of-words responsibility thoughts civilization images realize
Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.
culture philosophy literature rest holocaust dark sex civilization progressive erotic
There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.
culture war art living word civilization cities thing
To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?
culture environment dreams people time system sense world civilization economics sustainability ecology talk matter social destroy
[O]ne person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing.
culture perception society morality perspective prejudice normalcy civilization double-standards standards
I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.
culture forgiveness chaos order men history science human creation knowledge violence ignorance learn sympathy destruction civilization spite ideology gentleness
But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.
poetry culture money people creativity creative energy civilization create touch machines
If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb.. But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself?
effort culture philosophy man order men creation knowing earth fear heart spirit deep civilization talk strange timidity afraid part protect thing
What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.
culture society image civilization critical utopia west
Our political system is now run by the Big People for their own interests. If they ever deign to notice the Little People, it is with disdain and contempt.
culture politics people society system political america civilization run big interests contempt
In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.
equality culture guilt people feel free civilization europe act rich wealthy refinement
Are the worst enemies of society those who attack it or those who do not even give themselves the trouble of defending it?
culture trouble revolution enemies society civilization worst give
I wasn't sure about that, but one never knows. Sometimes a neighborhood, like a culture or civilization, is strong enough to absorb and acculturate any number of newcomers. But I don't know if that's true around here any longer. The outward forms and appearances look the same - [..]- but the substance has been altered.
culture philosophy life true strong civilization appearances
Showing 301 to 325 of 465 results
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments yet.