# Civilisation  ## Metadata - Author: Kenneth Clark - Full Title: Civilisation - Category: #books ## Highlights - Clark is open about his belief that culture is forged by elites rather than the masses: ‘Contrary to our modern sense of equality … one can’t help wondering how far civilisation would have evolved if it had been entirely dependent on the popular will.’ ([Location 87](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=87)) - he suggests that the ‘obsession’ with birds in medieval art is because they functioned as ‘symbols of freedom … very few people could move about – only artists and birds.’ ([Location 112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=112)) - ‘It may be difficult to define civilisation, but it isn’t so difficult to recognise barbarism’ ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=146)) - Moreover, I have the feeling that one should not try to assess a culture without knowing its language; so much of its character is connected with its actual use of words; and unfortunately I do not know any oriental languages. ([Location 263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=263)) - Ruskin said: ‘Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.’ ([Location 293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=293)) - Yet for four hundred years after it was discovered the Apollo was the most admired piece of sculpture in the world. ([Location 304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=304)) - --- ## New highlights added March 18, 2025 at 2:28 PM - meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity. ([Location 333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=333)) - There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed – it would have been better than nothing. Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity – enough to provide a little leisure. But, far more, it requires confidence – confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. ([Location 335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=335)) - So if one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted. ([Location 343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=343)) - Like the people of Alexandria they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater. Quite apart from discomforts and privations, there was no escape from it. Very restricted company, no books, no light after dark, no hope. ([Location 363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=363)) - Yet it was probably better to live in one of these tiny houses on the very edge of the world than in the shadow of one of the old giant works, where at any moment you might be attacked by a new wave of wanderers. ([Location 374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=374)) - Civilised man, or so it seems to me, must feel that he belongs somewhere in space and time; that he consciously looks forward and looks back. And for this purpose it is a great convenience to be able to read and write. ([Location 451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=451)) - All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war. ([Location 468](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=468)) - But fighting was necessary. Without Charles Martel’s victory over the Moors at Poitiers in 732, western civilisation might never have existed, and without Charlemagne’s tireless campaigning we should never have had the notion of a united Europe. ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=474)) - Charlemagne is the first great man of action to emerge from the darkness since the collapse of the Roman world. ([Location 476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=476)) - First of all, with the help of an outstanding teacher and librarian named Alcuin of York, he collected books and had them copied. ([Location 485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SRVAG0S&location=485))