Civilizations Quotes

I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities.

I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilizations out onto other planets, even though they may be utterly uninhabited.

AIDS is a global problem and there should be a global solution found by the entire international community. It is really scary to see and imagine our world fall into pieces because we refuse to share and put in the common vestiges of our civilizations.

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

Vierde man, De (1983) (["The Fourth Man") has to do with my vision of religion. In my opinion, Christianity is nothing more than one of many interpretations of reality, neither more nor less. Ideally, it would be nice to believe that there is a God somewhere out there, but it looks to me as if the whole Christian religion is a major symptom of schizophrenia in half the world`s population: civilizations scrambling to rationalize their chaotic existence. Subsequently, Christianity has a tendency to look like magic or the occult. And I liked that ambiguity, because I wanted my audience to take something home with them. I wanted them to wonder about what religion really is. Remember that Christianity is a religion grounded in one of the most violent acts of murder, the crucifixion. Otherwise, religion wouldn`t have had any kind of impact. With regards to the irony of the violence, much of that probably comes from my childhood experiences during and immediately following the Second World War. In fact, if it hadn`t been for the German occupation and then the American occupation, I would have never been a filmmaker.

It`s not really science-fiction, ... It`s the world 30 years from now, (a time) in which for 18 years no human child has been born, for unknown reasons. Civilizations are falling apart. England is the last remaining civilization as we know it, because it`s an island that`s insulated itself from Europe, which is in civil wars and complete pandemonium. So the story takes place in that context. It`s a story about hope and faith.

Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.

"Everything in this room is eatable. In fact even I am eatable, but that is called canabalism my dear children and is frowned upon in most civilizations.

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.

Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, businessman or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts, and varying interests.