Civilization

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“Just as societies have advanced [and] then faded away into a state of general decrepitude, so in each of them has marriage first previously changed from a temporary affair based on mutual consent to a lifelong association of one man with one woman, and then turned back to a loose union or to polygamy. … The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs.”

~Oxford sociologist J.D. Unwin

Simple Things

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“It is the simple things of life that make living worth while, the sweet fundamental things such as love and duty, work and rest and living close to nature. There are no hothouse blossoms that can compare in beauty and fragrance with my bouquet of wild flowers.”

“Across the years, the old home and its love called to me and memories of sweet words of counsel came flooding back. I realized that all my life the teachings of those early days have influenced me and the example set by father and mother has been something I have tried to follow, with failures here and there, with rebellion at times, but always coming back to it as the compass needle to the star.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Monday, August 3rd, 1914, England

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“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”

~Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary in 1914, at the outbreak of World War I.

On the Price of Corn and the Management of the Poor

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“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means.  I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.  In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and, of course, became poorer.   And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.  There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many almshouses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor.  Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful?  And do they use their best endeavors to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burden?  On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent [England in 1766].”

~Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin