Quotation Explorer - 'Civilization'

One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret. - Barry Lopez
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business. - Henry David Thoreau
You can't say civilization don't advance...in every war they kill you a new way. - Will Rogers
Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. - Arnold Toynbee
What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us-what convictions, what courage, what faith-win or lose. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principal can. - Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
Knowledge is the key driver of the progress of civilization. - Eraldo Banovac
They say the level of civilization is proportionate to the degree of cleanliness of the skin. Assuming that man has a soul, it must, in all likelihood, be housed in the skin. - Kōbō Abe
To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable. - Christian D. Larson
Civilization is a slow process of adopting the ideas of minorities. - Anonymous
civilization is the very root cause of the woes of civilization - Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. - Susan Sontag
Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-- they cannot work and their civilization collapses - Frank Herbert
No one dreamed them up. No one needed to. The vampire clawing at the window, the werewolf prowling the moor, the hags at the crossroads they lurked here already. Some nightmares are ancient, as old as civilization. Some are older still. - Robert Dunbar VORTEX
My goal is simple. It is to take the human civilization with me on the path of sweet general harmony. - Abhijit Naskar
Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists. - Joseph de Maistre
It was very relaxing to be away from civilization, and this bothered me. I should not have found the loneliness so welcoming. - Stephenie Meyer
Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life blood of real civilization. - G. M. Trevelyan
The solution to women’s issues can only be achieved in a free and democratic society in which human energy is liberated, the energy of both women and men together. Our civilization is called human civilization and is not attributed only to men or women. - توكل كرمان
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde
The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. - Sigmund Freud
Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. - Vince Lombardi
Like democracy, civilization has to be willed and practice. Otherwise, society is a war of all against all, powered by individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power.
Civilization is in fact the longest story of all. Civilization can persist through a series of economies. - Fernand Braudel
Before civilization, artists painted for the living. Today, most paint for a living. - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We have a name for the sum of grievances and compromises, this sheer normality of life lived among other people. We call it civilization. Culture, society, the workaday interactions of ordinary time. - Joseph Bottum
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top. - Hunter S. Thompson
But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness-each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked-each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity. - Herbert Butterfield
Family life was and always will be the foundation of any civilization. Destroy the family and you destroy the country. - Erin Pizzey
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. - Carl Sagan
Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy. - Richard Francis Burton
I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. - Christopher Hitchens
Civilization is very much an immature and ongoing experiment, the success of which is by no means yet proven.
this observation leads Rozin to a stunning conclusion: "Disgust is the basic emotion of civilization. - Winifred Gallagher
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size the everyone does not know everyone else. - Julian Jaynes
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. - Alfred North Whitehead
It seems to me that you can almost define civilization by saying it's people who are not willing to hurt other people because the other people are different. - Gene Wolfe
We are in a mutually dependent society, called civilization, and government is the oil that keeps it running and the lifeblood that carries oxygen to the various parts of the civic body. - Jack Lessenberry
The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy. - Winston S. Churchill
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. - Barbara W. Tuchman
Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future. - Bourke Cockran
Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew… - Will Durant
I've often heard people say, Your country is beautiful, a virtual paradise. When will the people of Indonesia be as beautiful as their land, with a civilization and culture that contributes to the greater beauty of humankind and no longer smothers and strangles the mind? - Pramoedya Ananta Toer
If and when our civilization comes to ruin, the destructive agent will be Science; man's knowledge of science, applied to warfare, meaning slaughter not only of human bodies, but of human institutions, of all we have created through the centuries. - Cicely Hamilton
Nothing is more important than a great idea that influenced thedevelopment of civilization. - Eraldo Banovac
When the purpose of clearly exposing the differences between the Aryan and the Tamil culture, civilization, conduct and creed Thirukkural was written. I am of that firm view. - Periyar E.V. Ramasamy
Simplicity is the peak of civilization. - Jessie Sampter
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. - Will Durant
A civilization must be judged by its standards not by its expenditure. - Amit Kalantri
Peace ought not be regarded the height of civilization, else like barbarians we forever battle for peace. - Criss Jami
you can't say civilization dont advance, in every war they kill you in a new way - Will Rogers
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan. - Martin Luther King Jr.
The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination. - Victor Hugo
Speech is civilization itself... It is silence which isolates. - Thomas Mann
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. - Albert Camus
Wilderness is wise; civilization enjoys the joy of foolishness. - Debasish Mridha
Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members. - Pearl S. Buck
Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization. - George Macaulay Trevelyan
....And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time - George Orwell
It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. - H. G. Wells
Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation. - Eugene V. Debs
A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization. - Karen Horney
He who writes well runs the civilization. Everyone else does the grunt work. - Kenneth W. Harl
When humor goes, there goes civilization. - Erma Bombeck
No civilization can thrive or survive if it refuses to adapt or change. - Debasish Mridha
I believe that without strict enforcement of penalties for any offence violating the principles of truth and honesty, Nigeria and Africa will not be able to move from our present state of underdevelopment into civilization. - Sunday Adelaja
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. - Sigmund Freud
I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve. - Charles Lindbergh
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. - Martin Luther King Jr.
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards. - Walter Bagehot
Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few. - Amos Bronson Alcott
Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself. - Jean Francois Revel
Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child. - Jack Kerouac
Where the human need for order meetsthe human tendency to mayhem, where civilization runs smack against its discontents, you find friction, and a great deal of general wear and tear. - Ian McEwan
The Message of Mohammad is not a set of metaphysical phenomena. It is a complete civilization. - W.A.R. Gibb
What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pleasant situation. - Terence McKenna
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. - Frank Lloyd Wright
On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.
The measuring rod of a civilization is the prosperity of the masses.
Music and image has continued to get more extreme as the world gets more extreme. We are the consequence of the modern decaying civilization. - Marilyn Manson
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep them in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization. - Sir Winston Churchill
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office. - Ambrose Bierce
Civilization is the commercialization of survival. - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
...have always been known for their storytelling. It appears to be the supreme expression of their spirit. Perhaps they know that, without a story, there could be no nation, no culture, no civilization, no life. - I. Murphy Lewis
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. - Georges Clemenceau
I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government but civilization itself. - Gerald R. Ford
Today every city, town, or village is affected by it. We have entered the Neon Civilization and become a plastic world.. It goes deeper than its visual manifestations, it affects moral matters; we are engaged, as astrophysicists would say, on a decaying orbit. - Raymond Loewy
Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization. - Yehudi Menuhin
The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization. - Robert Anton Wilson
Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots - Albert Einstein
Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet. - Terence McKenna
To regret religion is to regret Western civilization. - Theodore Dalrymple
People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn't got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge. - Idries Shah
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization. - Arnold Toynbee
Ideas are the factors that lift civilization. They create revolutions. There is more dynamite in an idea than in many bombs.
Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. - Ayn Rand
Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations. - James Madison
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. - Abraham Flexner
The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself. - Robert Ingersoll
In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware. - John Muir
The only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women. - William Moulton Marston
I am groping about through this American forest of prejudice and proscription, determined to find some form of civilization where all men will be accepted for what they are worth. - P.B.S. Pinchback
Selfishness is not a virtue. Altruism is not a moral weakness. Taxation is the price we pay for civilization. - Darryl Cunningham
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. - Ayn Rand
LOCK-AND-KEY, n. The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment. - Ambrose Bierce
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization. - Charles Lindbergh
What, after all, was the point of civilization if not the well-being of citizens? - Ann Leckie
My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law. - Richard M. Rorty
The family is the nucleus of civilization. - Will Durant
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization. - Sigmund Freud
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. - Thomas Jefferson
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours. - Grover Cleveland
Yes,I'm afraid you're right. Trial and error isn't a bad way to learn how to build an aircraft,but it can be a disastrous way to learn how to build a civilization. - Daniel Quinn
You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way. - Will Rogers
The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. - Cyril Connolly
It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. - Alfred North Whitehead
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Every religion which does not concern itself with Science is mere tradition, and that is not the essential. Therefore science, education and civilization are most important necessities for the full religious life.
If the teachings of the Protestants in Europe gave birth to the Protestant ethics and the modern civilization, it becomes alarming that most of our charismatic teachings today mainly concentrate on individual aggrandizement - Sunday Adelaja
Humans are naturally social; civilization causes us to be antisocial."From my next book: The Five Forgotten Truths - Kirk D. Sinclair
A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be. - Thomas Jefferson
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice. - Will Durant
What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one. - Margaret Mitchell
The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized. - Rachel Carson
We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge. - George F. Will
OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor. - Ambrose Bierce
Civilization is built on a number of ultimate principles...respect for human life, the punishment of crimes against property and persons, the equality of all good citizens before the law...or, in a word justice. - Max Nordau
[Americans] have realized many things for which the rest of the world is still struggling...[yet] the civilization and the morals of the Americans fall far below their own principles. - Harriet Martineau
TYPE, n. Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying civilization and enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this incomparable dictionary. - Ambrose Bierce
I look forward to an america in which commands respect throughout the world, not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world in which we will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction. - John F. Kennedy
Husbandry is the foundation of civilization - all sustenance derives from it, as well as the principal benefits and blessings that civilization brings. - Ibn 'Abdun
Behind the polite veneer of civilization the beast is always lurking. - Marty Rubin
The true law of the race is progress and development. Whatever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.
The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place. - Havelock Ellis
I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together , not only our government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad. - Gerald R. Ford
Any nation that wishes to enjoy the fruits of development and civilization, must follow the golden rules of this scripture as a national policy and culture. - Sunday Adelaja
Where two or more are gathered in the name of Man; that is civilization; that is Order; and that is the beginnings of brutality and suffering. - Christopher Dutton
Yes, it's vital to make lifestyle choices to mitigate damage caused by being a member of industrialized civilization, but to assign primary responsibility to oneself, and to focus primarily on making oneself better, is an immense copout, an abrogation of responsibility. - Derrick Jensen
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest. - Émile Zola
What I tell you three times is true. What I tell you three million times is civilization. - Mark Pesce
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. - Henry Allen
SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven. - Ambrose Bierce
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. - Mark Twain
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Civilization transformed man from a food gatherer to a gatherer of pieces of paper: diplomas, employment contracts, money, etc. - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane. - Yukichi Fukuzawa
NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization. - Ambrose Bierce
Despite 2000 years of evolution in modern times, we have still not managed to develop the intelligence to create a society that knows what love is. Our society is still not a civilization, it is still primitive and barbaric. - Swami Dhyan Giten
When vultures watching your civilization begin dropping dead, it is time to pause and wonder.
Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men. - Jane Addams
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. - Henry Kissinger
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization. - John O'Hara
What a time! What a civilization! - Cicero
We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization. - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization. - Barbara Kingsolver
If only one generation takes action in raising their children as humans, rather than raising boys and girls, the future human civilization shall get rid of the sinister phenomenon of misogyny sooner than you can imagine. - Abhijit Naskar
Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity. - Jacques Ellul
Real freedom lies in wildness,not in civilization!! - Charles Lindberg
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. - Bertrand Russell
A country road, a gravel road, is a sign of civilization, sure, but it’s just a farm, an easy conquest. Iron means a stronghold, people who can defend what’s theirs. - Kathy Bryson, Fighting Mad
Civilization begins with distillation - William Faulkner
Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If our civilization goes on like this, only one man will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest. - G.K. Chesterton
Knowledge is the key to the development of civilization. - Eraldo Banovac
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