A Quote by Huston Smith

I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.
I think you try to extrapolate from the early civilizations and cultures of the continent, kind of looking for unique ways they set themselves apart from Western civilizations, and then pursue those avenues technologically and see where that takes you.
Thousands of years and many civilizations have defined a marriage as the union between one man and one woman. With few exceptions, those civilizations that did not follow that perished.
Civilizations are built by the ceaseless toil of a succession of generations. With softness and sloth, civilizations succumb. Let us beware of decadence.
If we're thinking about old civilizations, those that formed a long time ago and there were stars and planets around long before Earth even existed, then these are going to be towards the center of the galaxy. That is the place to look if you think there are ancient civilizations that have made beacons or some other way of attracting our attention.
The key strengths of civilizations are also their central weaknesses. You can see that from the fact that the golden ages of civilizations are very often right before the collapse. The Renaissance in Italy was very much like the Classic Maya. The apogee was the collapse. The Golden Age of Greece was the same thing. We see this pattern repeated continuously, and it is one that should make us nervous. I just heard Bill Gates say that we are living in the greatest time in history. Now you can understand why Bill Gates would think that, but even if he is right, that is an ominous thing to say.
But I just don't think it's an abyss of nothingness [after death] and that we fall off and that our journey stops. I think it's circular and we go and we go and we go. I know that there are civilizations that I think are way more sophisticated than we are and I think more sophisticated civilizations lived before us.
It is time to stop the mealy-mouthed euphemisms: 'Nationalists', 'Loyalists', 'Communities', 'Ethnic Groups', 'Cultures', 'Civilizations'. Religions is the word you need. Religions is the word you are struggling hypocritially to avoid.
Civilizations may clash, but they surely fall if robbed of light from above. It could come from the 1 percent or the 99%, but a guiding light is needed to keep the United States from becoming the rubble of past great civilizations.
The role of religions in the domination and destruction of African civilizations was ruthless... Islam was as guilty as all the rest.
I hate the tribal hatred thesis - in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and places like that they kill each other because that's just what people do there. I think it's profoundly ignorant. I was astonished when Samuel Huntington wrote his famous clash of civilizations essay in response to the Yugoslavian war. I was on the streets in Sarajevo and every other person I met came from a mixed marriage. And here is Professor Huntington from Harvard writing this is a clash of civilizations. That was absurd.
Throughout the Arab and Islamic world the feeling is that we are now in top gear for a war of civilizations, a clash of civilizations. Support for the United States is very low and there are no voices within the Muslim world, except for a very few.
ASEM should build a new Silk Road to actively boost exchanges between these two civilizations in the new century so that countries in Asia and Europe will build on their respective civilizations and respect, learn from, complement and benefit each other.
India and Vietnam are old civilizations. We have ancient cultural and spiritual connections.
Most societies wipe themselves out and it's interesting to read about the last days of past civilizations. You'll note that the last days of past civilizations were filled with idiotic, irrational ideas and behaviors that couldn't be explained by reason.
Throughout history, civilizations have built a common cause through coming-of-age rituals. But we don't do that anymore. Maybe we should think about that.
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new [post-Cold-War] world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.
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