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• The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
  -- Alfred North Whitehead...
• Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking.
  -- Alfred North Whitehead...
• It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing.
  The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them....
• Every simplification is an oversimplification. -- A N Whitehead
• Without adventure civilization is in full decay. -- Alfred North Whitehead
• The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications....
• Civilization Law #1: Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations one can do without thinking about them.
• Labor, n.: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...