#civilization

"Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any subtlety of thought or expression. A man for his time, indeed."

"Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails."

"[N]ow we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it."

"Among peoples who possess a highly developed pugnacious instinct we find the greatest progress in the arts, sciences, social and political organization, commerce and industry. The instinct takes the milder form of rivalry which is the motive force of the great portion of the serious labors of mankind."

"Music and symbols, they're older than human race.Prehuman beings used them to teach early mankind."

"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation."

"This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not LET them starve. I will not LET the drought come. I will not LET the river flood."

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."

"This law … defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war."

"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."

"The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'."

"The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do."

"Civilization is vastly overrated."

"The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization."

"I am beginning to understand,"said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me..."

"Societies in decline have no use for visionaries."

"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."

"[T]he price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world."

"I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind."

"If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it."