Quotes about civilization
page 5

“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 book Green Dolphin Street

Source: Green Dolphin Street

Life, Bird, Tree, Time

“Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“… what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.”

Richard Brautigan The Tokyo-Montana Express

Source: The Tokyo-Montana Express

People, Heart, Housing

“Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Way, Nature, Passion, Forgetting

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Civilization

“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Men, Housing

“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 (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's

Law, Food, Sea

“Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Life, Beauty, Passion

“It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation’s Edge

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 6 “Earth” section 1, p. 100
Source: Foundation's Edge

Exercises

“Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Youth, Music

“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 book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Context: Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think... 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.

Intelligence

“The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Imagination

“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Imagination, Heart

“And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead / children out of the fields into the text / of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Children, Grass

“Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

World, Time

“It knew that the earth goddess intended on razing all human civilization, and this city, which had stood ffor thousands of years, was saying back to her: You wanna dissolve this city, Dirt Face? Give it a shot.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.”

Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Variant: There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), VII
Source: On the Concept of History

“Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.”

J. Maarten Troost (1969) American writer

Source: The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

Personality

“In Western Civilization, our elders are books.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Source: The Practice of the Wild: Essays

Books

“We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.”

Bill Bryson book Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

“Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Life, World, Knowledge

“Civilization is vastly overrated.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: On the Prowl

“A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Personality

“How much modern civilization has lost, I think, when they lost the awareness of the billions of stars overhead.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

Star, Thinking

“The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

Shown at the end of the episode "Scorched Earth", no. 14 in the 3rd season of Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, first aired on February 7, 2000.

War, Fight

“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding out what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 10: "Conversation", p. 157

Secret, World

“Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.”

Jo Walton book Among Others

Source: Among Others

World

“It's love this and love that but of couse it's so easy to love someone you don't know, whether it's George Clooney or Monkey. Staying civil to someone with whom you've ever shared Christmas turkey- now there's a miracle.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

Love, Christmas

“It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.”

Orson Scott Card book The Folk of the Fringe

Source: The Folk of the Fringe

Women, Men, Time

“Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

" What I Believe http://www.unz.org/Pub/Forum-1930sep-00133" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 136 <br class="br">1930s <br class="br">Context: Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances, the heavier his load of faith.

Men

“If there are no books. There is no civilization.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Books, Peaceful, Christmas, For Wife

“Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Men

“What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!”

Michael Pollan book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Source: Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

People

“Some people don’t respond to civility.”

James Ellroy book The Black Dahlia

Source: The Black Dahlia

People

“When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Way

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

Tariq Ali (1943) British Pakistani writer, journalist, and historian

Source: The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

“The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

Source: King Kull

Thinking

“Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.”

Mercedes Lackey book Alta

Source: Alta

Truth

“[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

Travel, Question

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Art, Music, Imagination

“Books are the carriers of civilization… They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989) American historian and author

Variant: Books are... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.

Books, Teachers

“I’ll take your bet,” he said grimly. “I’m going to win it. And in three months, I’m going to put this back on your finger, and take you to bed, and do things to you that are outlawed in the civilized world.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

World

“If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Women

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part II, 775.

Reality

“There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities”

Molière The Misanthrope

Source: The Misanthrope

Time

“There are only three things that America will be remembered for 2000 years from now when they study this civilization: The Constitution, Jazz music, and Baseball. These are the 3 most beautiful things this culture's ever created.”

Gerald Early (1952) American poet

Beauty, Music, Study

“A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"BOG VENUS VERSUS NAZI COCK-RING: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography" in Arthur magazine, Vol. 1, No. 25 (November 2006) http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1685 <br class="br">Source: 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom <br class="br">Context: Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. Not that I’m trying to load my argument, of course.

Age, Literature, Mathematics

“I have no argument with those who see in organized religion a template or an imperative to live life according to a prescribed set of beliefs. Just give others the room, within the laws of civil society, to believe or not believe whatever they like.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

Life, Religion, Law

“The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

People, Change, Heart

“I think in our desire to create a better America, we have to have civilized debate in this country and not just yelling.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Thinking, Country

“Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

"What is Civilization?" Ladies' Home Journal, LXIII (January, 1946).

Change

“Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve
got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up
the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money
gives out.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Life, Money, Education, Dependency

“Civility and etiquette, gentlemen, are all important.”

Hal Duncan (1971) Scottish writer

Scruffians! Stories of Better Sodomites

“This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Money, Books, Country

“He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

Pain, World, History, Nature

“Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn't make us civilized… That's organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn't exist at all.”

Jonathan Maberry book Dust & Decay

Source: Dust & Decay

Life, Heart

“There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Source: The Great Book of Amber

Art

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 2 : Civilizations in History and Today, § 10 : Relations Among Civilizations, p. 51

World, Religion, Idea, Forgetting

“It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”

Sigmund Freud book The Future of an Illusion

Es braucht nicht gesagt zu werden, daß eine Kultur, welche eine so große Zahl von Teilnehmern unbefriedigt läßt und zur Auflehnung treibt, weder Aussicht hat, sich dauernd zu erhalten, noch es verdient.
Source: 1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

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

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“And now I wish I hadn’t been civil, because he says he shall not despair! He is as stupid as Endymion!”
“No, no!” said Alverstoke soothingly. “Nobody could be as stupid as Endymion!”

Georgette Heyer book Frederica

Source: Frederica

Stupidity, Despair

“Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“Technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Death, procreation, birth all submit to technical efficiency and systemization.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Death, Birth

“I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Success

“Politics is not about justice. It's about the settling of personal vendettas under a thin veneer of civilization. All politics is personal.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

Justice, Personality

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

First published in the "Roger Ebert's Journal" column (19 May 2010) http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/cannes-7-a-campaign-for-real-movies

“The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

“Dilemma of a civilized man; body mobilized but danger obscure.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

“Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“Maybe they didn't want you to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There's always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away all that's left is some story in a history class.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

History, Dependency

“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 (1932–2007) American author and polymath

God, Behavior

“There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

War

“There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Secret, World

“The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Religion

“Unusual financial activity: none, unless you count the fact that someone in the family is way too into Civil War biographies. (Can this be a possible indication of Confederate insurgents still living and working in Virginia? Must research further.)”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

War, Family, Way

“The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Behavior

“In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be shocking becomes more important - and often more profitable - than to be civil or creative or truly original.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Life, Way, Time

“The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

“Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.”

Charles Stross (1964) British science fiction writer and blogger

Source: Toast, and Other Stories

Children

“The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.”

Iris Murdoch book The Red and the Green

Source: The Red and the Green

Heart

“They parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Parting

“… the first sign of civilization is always trash.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

“I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.”

Paul Krugman book The Conscience of a Liberal

Source: The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), Ch. 13. The Conscience of a Liberal http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=5887. W. W. Norton & Company. 352 pages ISBN 978-0-393-06069-0, 1st edition (2007)

Law, Democracy, Support, Wealth

“She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent and affectionate as ever, and our Attachment as firm and sincere as when it first commenced.”

Jane Austen book Love and Freindship

Source: Love and Friendship

Time, Sincerity