Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on the degradation of the arts will go on and if that system is to last for ever then art is doomed and will surely die that is to say civilization will die.

After a few months in my parents' basement I took an apartment near the state university where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.

Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization it is the best part of refinement and in many ways an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.

There was an age however when the transition from savagery to civilization with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture took place for the first time.

Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

The greatest advances of civilization whether in architecture or painting in science and literature in industry or agriculture have never come from centralized government.

I have for some time urged that a nuclear abolition summit to mark the effective end of the nuclear era be convened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 70th anniversary of the bombings of those cities with the participation of national leaders and representatives of global civil society.

We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.