Civilization - Quotes

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. - Will Durant

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. - Mark Twain

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men. - Jane Addams

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. - Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest. - Emile Zola

Civilization wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere. - Richard Bach 

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. - Robert E. Howard

Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. - Frank Herbert

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. - Eugene Victor Debs

It is the business of future to be dangerous … The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur. - Alfred North Whitehead

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life. - Elizabeth Goudge

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person. - William Feather

Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilisation reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well? - Emile Zola

The future of civilisation depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today. - Albert Schweitzer

The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men. - Havelock Ellis

The man who first abused his fellows with swear-words instead of bashing their brains out with a club should be counted among those who laid the foundations of civilization. - Sir John Denham

The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words! - Ursula K. Le Guin

We are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour. - Tennessee Williams

You can tell a lot about a civilization by the quality of the people found in its jails. - David Gerrold