“There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.”
Source: The Great Book of Amber
2010s
Source: Austin Brown. " Geoffrey B. West, 'Why Cities Keep on Growing, Corporations Always Die, and Life Gets Faster' http://blog.longnow.org/02011/07/26/geoffrey-b-west-%E2%80%9Cwhy-cities-keep-on-growing-corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster%E2%80%9D/." at blog.longnow.org, July 26th, 2011.
“There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.”
Source: The Great Book of Amber
“The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.”
Source: Philosophical Sketches (1962), Ch. 6, p. 101
Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft."
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 1, p. 21
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Civilization
Nature's Eternal Religion (1973), Ch. 2, Paragraph 2
Nature's Eternal Religion (1973)
Source: 1990s and beyond, A McLuhan Sourcebook (1995), p. 291