There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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
The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.
—Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher
We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gunpowder, Printing, and the Protestant Religion.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
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
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
All that is best in the civilization of today, is the fruit of Christ’s appearance among men.
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852) American Statesman, Lawyer
Civilization is what makes you sick.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
—William Feather (1889–1981) American Publisher, Author
One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
—William C. Durant (1861–1947) American Industrialist
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) Russian Novelist, Essayist, Writer
We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.
—Bill Bryson (1951–95) American Humorist, Author, Educator
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
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72) American Jewish Rabbi
Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages.
—Hervey Allen (1889–1949) American Writer
When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852) American Statesman, Lawyer
The post office, with its educating energy, augmented by cheapness, and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind, so that the power of a wafer, or a drop of wax guards a letter, as it flies over sea and land, and bears it to its address as if a battalion of artillery had brought it, I look upon as a first measure of civilization.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
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
The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, 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
Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn’t it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? (referring to cliff dwellings)
Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway.
—Barbara Kingsolver (b.1955) American Novelist, Essayist, Poet
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
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
Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Civilization is being poisoned by its own waste products
—William Motter Inge (1913–73) American Playwright, Novelist
In order to civilize a people, it is necessary first to fix it, and this cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the soil.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
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
Nations, like individuals, live or die, but civilization cannot perish.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) Italian Patriot, Political Leader
Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.
—Jane Addams (1860–1935) American Social Reformer, Feminist
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
—Emile Zola (1840–1902) French Novelist
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Civilization is hideously fragile… there’s not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish.
—C. P. Snow
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
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
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
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
The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes.—First, men were in chains, that went back to an iron hand—then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron, and ruling by force.—The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.
—Wendell Phillips (1811–84) American Abolitionist, Lawyer, Orator
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
Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the present with the past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse’s birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Pres: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Without winners, there wouldn’t even be any civilization.
—Woody Hayes (1913–87) American Sportsperson
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
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
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher