It is not easy to say what is the matter with civilization; but clearly one of its chief defects is that it cannot take certainty for granted, because its members spend most of their time doubting everything, including themselves.

We are all of us the debtors of those who have gone before. Not one of us has invented the alphabet, the road, the plow, or the custom of mercy — and yet we spend our days as though we were self-created, owing nothing to anyone.

It is not the conscious innovations of men of learning or genius that really transform a civilization: it is the unconscious innovations of the anonymous multitude.

We are at war with Nature; whichever side wins, we lose.

We are all of us the debtors of the past. We did not make the language we speak, the roads we travel, the beds we sleep in, or the laws that protect us. We came to a table already spread, and it is only decent that we should leave it a little more abundantly furnished for those who come after us.

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machine, and now the machine is reinventing us.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machine, but we have not invented a sufficient control of the machine; and worst of all, we have not invented any adequate philosophy of the machine.

We are now at a point where we must decide whether we are to have a future on this planet, not because of the atomic bomb, but because of the way we have treated the world.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machine, and now the machine is bent on inventing us.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machine, and now the machine is reinventing us. We must learn to think in a new way, or perish.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machine, but we have not invented the controls that belong with the machine.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machine and the machine has possessed us, and we must either slay the machine or ourselves.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machine, and now the machine is in the process of reinventing us.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents. The machine has possessed us, and we must either master it or perish.

We are dying from civilisation and its discontents; we have invented the machines, but we do not know how to live with them.