“Civilization is vastly overrated.”

“Urban civilization is warring civilization.”

“This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe”

“It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.”

“I expect a civil word for a civil word!”

“for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized”

“Commodore Marlin: My friend, I ask you a plain civil question; will you give me a plain, civil answer?
Sam Slick: Thinks to myself, Commodore, the question is civil enough, but you ain't civil, and your manner ain't civil.”

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.”

“For we see that man is a civil and political animal, and is naturally inclined to civilization.”

“I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.”