Quotes: Civilization.

The idea in bold-face print is a summary of the quote. The number is the page on which the quote was found.

Civilization
Civilization 841 Mankind's inventions are blotting out the beauty of nature and human life. "In one way or another, here and there, and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of human life." Hawthorne: “Fire-Worship”

Civilization 1129 Indian arrowheads differ from modern artifacts because of their individuality. "Their [Indian arrowheads’] great charm consists in this rudeness, and in the individuality of each article, so different from the productions of civilized machinery, which shapes everything on one pattern." Hawthorne: Preface to “The Old Manse”

Civilization 171 Civilization only complicates man's barbarism and misery. "In growing civilized has man really done anything more than complicate his barbarism and refine his misery?" Paul Bourget. 1883. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Civilization xix Freud uncovered the hidden worlds of the individual; Frazer uncovered the hidden worlds of society. "Indeed, what Freud did for the individual, Frazer did for civilization as a whole...as Freud deepened men’s insight into the behavior of individuals by uncovering the ruder world of the subconscious, from which so much of it [behavior] springs, so Frazer enlarged man’s understanding of the behavior of societies by laying bare the primitive concepts and modes of thought which underlie and inform so many of their institutions and which persist, as a subliminal element of their culture, in their traditional folk customs." Gaster, Editor’s Foreword. Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Civilization xx Primitive behavior occurs in modern man. "...overall picture of how, at the primitive level, man in general thinks and acts, and of how that primitive mentality persists sporadically even in the more advanced stages of his development." Gaster, Editor’s Foreword. Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Civilization xxv From savagery to civilization. "...enabling us to follow the long march, the slow and toilsome ascent of humanity from savagery to civilization." J.G. Frazer, Introduction. Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Civilization xxvi Many of our beliefs are based on superstition rather than on science. "...shows that much which we are wont to regard as solid rests on the sands of superstition rather than on the rock of nature." J.G. Frazer, Introduction. Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Civilization 496 Men humanize their divinities as they grow more civilized. "As men emerge from savagery the tendency to humanize their divinities gains strength…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Civilization 738 The path of knowledge goes from magic to religion to science. "…the movement of the higher thought, so far as we can trace it, has on the whole been from magic through religion to science." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Civilization 420 "Where the paved road ends…." DeLillo, Underworld.

Civilizations 1025 Men think that their own way of doing things will persist forever. "…and imagine, doubtless, that their own system of affairs will endure forever." Hawthorne: “Main-Street”