We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.
By the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation.
Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit – to the ‚conquest‘ of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.
At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.
