Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
—Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British Historian
Art is the signature of civilizations.
—Beverly Sills (1929–2007) American Singer, Musician
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
Is man’s civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The most civilized people are as near to barbarism, as the most polished steel is to rust.—Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.
—Antoine de Rivarol (1753–1801) French Writer, Epigrammatist
Civilization—a heap of rubble scavenged by scrawny English Lit. vultures.
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–90) English Journalist, Author, Media Personality, Satirist
There is nothing more fragile than civilization.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
Civilization is what makes you sick.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
Education is the transmission of civilization.
—William C. Durant (1861–1947) American Industrialist
Civilization is the lamb’s skin in which barbarism masquerades.
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Writer, Poet, Critic, Editor
And the wind shall say “Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls”.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure
—John Dewey (1859–1952) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator
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
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
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
Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air?
—Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) American Christian Science Religious Leader, Humanitarian, Writer
Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
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 more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
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 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
Leash: n, a means by which animals, formerly running wild, are prevented from running tame, also.
—Robert Brault
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Here is the element or power of conduct, of intellect and knowledge, of beauty, and of social life and manners, and all needful to build up a complete human life.—We have instincts responding to them all, and requiring them all, and we are perfectly civilized only when all these instincts of our nature—all these elements in our civilization have been adequately recognized and satisfied.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
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
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
—William C. Durant (1861–1947) American Industrialist
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
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, Science Writer
Man was not intended by nature to live in communities and be civilized.
—Epicurus (c.341–270 BCE) Greek Philosopher
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
The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) Russian Novelist, Essayist, Writer
The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion… . Civilisation is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilisation, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilisation there is always an element of unrest. For sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilised order survives on its merits, and is transformed by its power of Recognizing its imperfections.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
Without winners, there wouldn’t even be any civilization.
—Woody Hayes (1913–87) American Sportsperson
The origin of civilization is man’s determination to do nothing for himself which he can get done for him.
—H. C. Bailey (1878–1961) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Civilization depends on morality.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American 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
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
One… gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
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
The central question is whether the wonderfully diverse and gifted assemblage of human beings on this earth really knows how to run a civilization.
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–65) American Diplomat, Politician, Orator
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.
—David Hare (b.1947) English Dramatist, Director, Film-Maker