A Quote by Herbert Read

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

Herbert Read

Quote Topics

Achievements Artists Civilization Culture Individuals Material Material Wealth Military Military Power Poets Power Quality Representative Terms Valued Wealth Worth

Quote Author

Herbert Read
English - Poet
December 4, 1893 - June 12, 1968

Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence.

Paul Klee

I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth.

Paul Robeson

I went to Havana, and I was like, "Wow, there's culture everywhere!" That was one thing that I did notice when I went to Cuba was that artists are paid to be artists, and poets are paid to be poets, and musicians are paid to be musicians by the government. The government - and I'm not saying that the Cuban government's perfect - but the government does place a value on culture.

Aaron McGruder

We recognize that our progress as a species does not have to be defined in terms of wealth or material and physical growth any more than our progress as individuals has to be defined in terms of physical growth. Physical growth of the body reaches a limit, but the character and the soul of the individual continues to grow, or at least has a chance to continue, often to our last breath. It is simple minded to define our well being in material terms, when that well-being has an aesthetic dimension, and intellectual dimension, a moral dimension.

Wes Jackson

The time and the quality of the time that their parents devote to them indicate to children the degree to which they are valued by their parents. . . . When children know that they are valued, when they truly feel valued in the deepest parts of themselves, then they feel valuable. This knowledge is worth more than any gold.

M. Scott Peck

I don't doubt that at the dawn of martial arts, the main goal was to beat up one's opponents in the most effective way possible. But then, indirectly, the alchemy of martial arts began to strike some chords deep within the spirit of many individuals, transforming living war-machines into poets, artists, and philosophers.

Daniele Bolelli

Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects. I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years - that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding.

Tino Sehgal

Wine has been with us since the beginning of civilization. It is the temperate, civilized, sacred, romantic mealtime beverage recommended in the Bible. Wine has been praised for centuries by statesmen, philosophers, poets, and scholars. Wine in moderation is an integral part of our culture, heritage and gracious way of life.

Robert Mondavi

Warhol came from an ordinary family and he had a profound understanding about capitalism and material culture. He was probably one of the few Western artists - or artists from the United States - that could be considered a true product of his time and brought out that kind of spirit of the culture.

Ai Weiwei

I was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-they cannot work and their civilization collapses.

Frank Herbert

In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.

Felix Adler

Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.

Frank Herbert

The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilization there is always an element of unrest.