Diderot ... In The Encyclopaedia he wrote articles on everything. ibid.
Adam Smith, David Hume, Joseph Black and James Watt: it’s a matter of historical fact that these were the men who soon after the year 1760 changed the whole current of European thought and life. ibid.
Voltaire is one of those writers whose virtue is inseparable from his style. ibid.
We have an exceptionally vivid record in the world of Hogarth. ibid.
Here’s the polling booth with the imbeciles and moribund being persuaded to make their mark. ibid.
The urban society, of which Hogarth has left us many, records plenty of animal spirits but not what we could call by any stretch civilisation. ibid.
The most gifted painter of his day: David. ibid.
During the next hundred years they concocted a new belief ... a belief in the divinity of nature. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 11/13: The Worship of Nature
A gentle melancholy: gentle poetry was inspired by that mood. ibid.
English painting also produced two men of genius: Turner and Constable. ibid.
Turner – he was a genius of the first order; far the greatest painter that England has ever produced. ibid.
At that time the Impressionists had no idea they were following up a philosophical theory. ibid.
Finally he [Monet] turned to the water lily garden which he had made in his grounds ... Total immersion ... I feel therefore I am. ibid.
At this point the revolution was the romantic movement in action. And perhaps its greatest legacy to posterity has been its message to the young. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 12/13: The Fallacies of Hope
I can see them still through the window of the university of the Sorbonne impatient to change the world, vivid in hope, although what precisely they hope for or believe in I don’t know. ibid.
The Revolutionaries wanted to replace Christianity with the religion of Nature. ibid.
And on the name Robespierre one remembers how horribly all this idealism came to grief in the prisons of the terror. ibid.
What in all this glory had happened to the great heroes who spoke for humanity in the revolutionary years? ibid.
Beethoven wasn’t a political man, but he responded to the generous sentiments of the revolution. ibid.
They swore an oath to establish a constitution. David, the painter of Republican virtue, was commissioned to record the scene. ibid.
The first picture in which Delacroix is entirely himself is The Massacre at Chios. ibid.
Some of his greatest pictures were inspired by Byron. ibid.
Rodin – he was the last great romantic artist ... What an artist he was. ibid.
In France there emerged two painters whose social realism was in the centre of the European tradition: Jean-Francois Millais and Gustave Courbet. They were both revolutionaries. ibid.
Courbet painted an even more impressive example of his sympathy with ordinary people - his enormous picture of a funeral ... Courbet achieves a feeling of equality in the presence of death. ibid.
Among its most beautiful productions are these paintings by Renoir ... Just a group of ordinary human beings enjoying themselves. ibid.
The Impressionists didn’t set out to be popular. The only great painter ... in the widest possible sense was ironically enough the only one who achieved absolutely no success in his lifetime: Vincent van Gogh. ibid.
His unconquerable need to paint. ibid.
New York was made by men: it took almost the same time to reach its present condition as it took to complete the Gothic cathedrals. Kenneth Clarke, Civilisation 13/13: Heroic Materialism
Behind this grim uniformity lurks an even grimmer poverty. And problems that seem almost insoluble. ibid.
Howard’s book on penal reform was published in 1777. And Clarkson’s essay on slavery in 1776. ibid.
I have tried throughout this series to define civilisation in terms of creative power and enlargement of human faculties. ibid.
Even the un-squeamish stomach of the eighteenth century were turned by accounts of the Middle Passage. ibid.
It’s reckoned that over nine millions slaves died from heat and suffocation in those holes on the way to America. A remarkable figure even by modern standards. ibid.
From the start poets had recognised the nature of the satanic mills. ibid.
This new religion of gain had behind it a body of doctrine. ibid.
The rise of population did nearly ruin us. It struck a blow at civilisation more ominous than anything since the barbarian invasions. ibid.
I think that Dickens did more than anyone to diffuse an awakened consciousness. ibid.
In the middle of the nineteenth century there was no children’s hospital in London. ibid.
Humanitarianism was the great achievement of the nineteenth century. ibid.
These and even more unspeakable cruelties were carried out by agents of the establishment usually in defence of property. ibid.
The strongest creative impulse at the time didn’t go into architecture but into engineering. ibid.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: he was a born romantic ... He remained all his life in love with the impossible. ibid.
We have no idea where we are going. ibid.
Unfortunately machines – from the Maxim gun to the computer – are for the most part means by which an authoritarian regime can keep man in subjection. ibid.
Our other speciality is the urge to destruction. With the help of machines we did our best to destroy ourselves in two wars and in doing so we released a flood of evil. ibid.
I don’t at all feel we that are entering upon a new age of barbarism. ibid.
I should doubt whether so many people have ever been as well fed, as well read, as bright minded, as curious and as critical as the young are today. ibid.
One doesn’t need to be young to dislike institutions. But the dreary fact remains that even in the darkest ages it was institutions which made society work. ibid.
At this point I reveal myself in my true colours as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos. Creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence. Forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance. And I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than an ideology. I believe that in spite of recent triumphs of science men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years. And in consequence we must still try to learn from history: history is ourselves ... I believe in courtesy ... And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters. Above all, I believe in the god-given genius of certain individuals. And I value a society that makes their existence possible. ibid.
Western civilisation has been a series of rebirths. Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves. ibid.
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs. ibid.
There is still no centre. The moral and intellectual failure of Marxism has left us with no alternative to heroic materialism. And that isn’t enough. ibid.
So now it’s back to civilization. All the brightness and everything I hate. I just wanted to be left alone. The Chronicles of Riddick 2004 starring Vin Diesel & Thandie Newton & Judi Dench & Colm Feore & Karl Urban & Alexa Davalos & Linus Roache & Yorick van Wageningen & Nick Chinlund et al, director David Twohy, Riddick
Without law, commander, there is no civilisation. The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 starring Alec Guinness & William Holden & Jack Hawkins & Ann Sears & Sessue Hayakawa & James Donald & Geoffrey Horne & Heihachiro Okawa & Keiichiro Katsumoto et al, director David Lean, Guinness to Holden
A new civilisation is emerging in our lives. This new civilisation brings with it new family styles, changed ways of working, loving and living. A new economy, new political conflicts, and beyond all this an altered consciousness as well. The dawn of this new civilisation is the single most explosive fact in our lifetimes. Alvin Toffler, The Third Way