A Quote by Evelyn Waugh
It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.
Related Quotes
Civilization - and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe - has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance ... It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis on which it rests ... Christianity ... is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.
Having come into contact with a civilization which has over-emphasized the freedom of the individual, we are in fact faced with one of the big problems of Africa in the modern world. Our problem is just this: how to get the benefits of European society - benefits that have been brought about by an organization based upon the individual - and yet retain African's own structure of society in which the individual is a member of a kind of fellowship.
Prosperity is an essential partner in civilization itself. It is the basis of leisure, charity, and a hopeful outlook on life. It is the means for conquering poverty at the lowest rung of society, the basis on which children and the elderly are cared for, the foundation for the cultivation of arts and learning. Crush an economy and you crush civilization.
No longer will we tolerate one job killing delay after another. No longer will we accept a broken system that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hardworking Americans.
Everything in modern civilization is based on this concept of time which is not really valid.
Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, not only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, is subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change. There must be absolutely acceptance of the possibility that everything material in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear.
We march on toward the realization of the American Dream. We are not diverted by those who would deny opportunity based on what we look like or where we came from or who would deny equality based on who we love.
The transcendent and the numinous can be accessible to the most materialistic of scientists, without positing the supernatural. At the same time, there is no reason to mistrust the same experiences in believers simply because they posit a supernatural source. The question is not, "Does God exist?" It's irrelevant. The question is whether believers and nonbelievers can rejoice in the same experiences and not denigrate the other's explanation as to the origins of very powerful human responses.
According to traditional wisdom in rural France, a baby in the womb should be compared to fruit on the tree. Not all the fruit on the same tree is ripe at the same time...we must accept that some babies need a much longer time than others before they are ready to be born.
On a daily basis, I think it's really important to be conscious of gender-based discrimination - which presents in sometimes more, but often less, obvious forms - and do everything possible to defeat that discrimination.
We have to accept the idea that Europe will be made on a two-speed basis, with a union based on solidarity and differentiation.
That sacred space of conscience where you can exercise your rights in terms of religious freedom and deeply-held, reasonable beliefs is the core of human dignity. In fact, that's the basis for civilization itself. And when you lose that fundamental principle... you have no basis on which to build.
To be clear, civilization is not the same as society. Civilization is a specific, hierarchical organization based on 'power over.' Dismantling civilization, taking down that power structure, does not mean the end of all social order. It should ultimately mean more justice, more local control, more democracy, and more human rights, not less.
What we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues.
Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of "things" and not of "persons," a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used. In the context of a civilization of use, woman can become an object for man, children a hindrance to parents, the family an institution obstructing the freedom of its members.
There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God.... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.
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