The vigour of civilised societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth while. Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment, the Peace brought by something worth while. Such personal gratification arises from aim beyond personality.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Civilization is hideously fragile… there’s not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish.
—C. P. Snow
I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
A civilized society is one that exhibits the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art and peace.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
Civilization is the order and freedom promoting cultural activity.
—William C. Durant (1861–1947) American Industrialist
Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
—Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French Theologian, Musician, Philosopher, Physician
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish Critic, Journalist, Philosopher
We are no longer in a state of growth; we are in a state of excess. We are living in a society of excrescence. The boil is growing out of control, recklessly at cross purposes with itself, its impacts multiplying as the causes disintegrate.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform… Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrifice
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
—Unknown
Civilization… wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Man was not intended by nature to live in communities and be civilized.
—Epicurus (c.341–270 BCE) Greek Philosopher
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) Russian Novelist, Essayist, Writer
Society is a made-up formula of what we are supposed to be, kept alive by those who believe in it…. I laugh in the ugly face of society, with all its fabricated dimensions.
—Unknown
Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and the sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.
—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970) American Writer, Critic, Naturalist
The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
—Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British Historian
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State… For Truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German Philosopher
When you can’t do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.
—Lois McMaster Bujold (b.1949) American Novelist, Writer
It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
—William C. Durant (1861–1947) American Industrialist
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.
—Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American Paleontologist
Without winners, there wouldn’t even be any civilization.
—Woody Hayes (1913–87) American Sportsperson
I stood on a tower in the wet,
And New Year and Old Year met,
And winds were roaring and blowing:
And I said, “O years, that meet in tears,
Have ye aught that is worth the knowing?
Science enough and exploring,
Wanderers coming and going,
Matter enough for deploring,
But aught that is worth the knowing?”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops; no, but the kind of men the country turns out.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called ‘natural’ man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–99) American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic
Civilization depends on morality.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
A living civilization creates; a dying, builds museums.
—Martin H. Fischer
As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure
—John Dewey (1859–1952) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator
Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
More and more I come to value charity and love of one’s fellow being above everything else… All our lauded technological progress—our very civilization—is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gunpowder, Printing, and the Protestant Religion.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Civilization—a heap of rubble scavenged by scrawny English Lit. vultures.
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–90) English Journalist, Author, Media Personality, Satirist
We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.
—Bill Bryson (1951–95) American Humorist, Author, Educator