Triumphant science and technology are only at the threshold of man's command over sources of energy so stupendous that, if used for military purposes, they can wipe out our entire civilization.

To be sure, no piece of social machinery, however well constructed, can be effective unless there is back of it a will and a determination to make it work.

I fully realize that the new organization is a human rather than a perfect instrumentality for the attainment of its great objective. As time goes on it will, I am sure, be improved.

There is no greater responsibility resting upon peoples and governments everywhere than to make sure that enduring peace will this time - at long last - be established and maintained.

Within a few weeks the organization for the maintenance of international peace and security, established by the San Francisco Charter, will be formally launched through the convocation of the first General Assembly of the United Nations.

Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself.

Fortunately, the war has brought with it not alone a stark realization of what another war would mean to the world, but as well the creation of an international agency through which the nations of the world can, if they so desire, make peace a living reality.

That war has brought with it a truly incredible development of means of destruction and a terrifying prospect of rapid and almost limitless development in that direction.

Please let me assure you, however, that the keen disappointment and regret which I feel in this regard serve only to enhance my profound appreciation of the great honor which you have done me; and my sincere gratitude for your generous action.

Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.

Triumphant science and technology are only at the threshold of man's command over sources of energy so stupendous that, if used for military purposes, they can wipe out our entire civilization.

Every good citizen should be willing to devote a brief time during some one day in the year when necessary to the making up of a listing of his income for taxes to contribute to his Government not the scriptural tithe but a small percentage of his net profits.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the storm center.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

It is just because civilization is ever evolving, changing, and becoming more complicated, that experts find it so difficult to define it in explicit terms.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood.

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

Through the wholesale destruction of the representatives of a class that from the beginning of history had been the directing and creative force in civilization, a process began which was almost mechanical.

Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.

Yet, history has shown that if material force can defeat some ideologies it can no longer obliterate a civilization without destabilizing the whole planet.

To deal with the true causes of war one must begin by recognizing as of prime relevancy to the solution of the problem the familiar fact that civilization is a partial, incomplete, and, to a great extent, superficial modification of barbarism.

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.

To one who believes that really good industrial conditions are the hope for a machine civilization, nothing is more heartening than to watch conference methods and education replacing police methods.

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.

The slum is the measure of civilization.

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

No administration could stop the tidal wave of immigration that swept over the land; no political party could restrain or control the enterprise of our people, and no reasonable man could desire to check the march of civilization.

Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition.

Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.

There is every indication that we are to see new developments of the power of aggregated capital to serve civilization, and that the new developments will be made right here in America.

No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library... When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end.