Civilization Quotes

A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.

What I tell you three times is true. What I tell you three million times is civilization.

There is something hugely civilised about allowing long pauses in a conversation. Very few people can stand that kind of silence.

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.

A savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

The Jews always complained, kvetching about false gods, and erected the biggest false God, Jehovah, in middle of western civilization.

Discussions of Western civilization are too often confined to works of high art that reflect a relatively narrow element of public taste and experience.

By working and living in New York, you are breathing Western civilization, continuously reminded of its benefits and its values.

To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization.

The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.

When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved.

As the publisher of the 'Tory,' I strive to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.

As Gandhi famously responded when asked about "Western civilization," "I wish they had one," the same applies to "international community": "I wish there was one."

I’ve met plenty of embarrassing parents, but Kronos, the evil Titan Lord who wanted to destroy Western Civilization? Not the kind of dad you invited to school for Career Day.

Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.

Because the Western civilization is dominated by dualistic thinking, holistic scientists and philosophers don't get the recognition they deserve.

Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.

The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.

Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation.

Offering thanks in the midst of tragedy is an American tradition, . even during a bloody Civil War.

I think human arrogance will be the demise of civilization.

A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.

The freedom of speech is an important yardstick for a society's level of civilization.

Reached only by boat, seaplane and, with less surety, telephone-this is Fire Island, a pile of sand beneath a pile of people.

Our way of life is at stake, our grandchildren are at stake, the future of civilization is at stake.

The spiritual sense of our place in nature... can be traced to the origins of human civilization... The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity.

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

The way I think of my work is that I have to think up the way to tell a story, starting from scratch. The changes in the industry concern me in a general way because I think civilization is doomed.

People get upset when Baghdad, the "Cradle of Civilization" is burning, or when the Buddhas in Afghanistan are falling. These are real concerns.

Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.

Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.

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.

Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk.

The dinner table is a rite of civilization and we need to participate in that to keep our families together, to keep our communities together.

The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.

By challenging anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, science fiction throws open the whole of civilization and its premises to constructive criticism.

We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature, and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.

I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.

An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.

Civilization degrades many in order to exalt the few.

Our civilization ... is not devaluing its awareness of the unknowable; nor is it deifying it. It is the first civilization that has severed it from religion and superstition. In order to question it.

If civilization is going to survive, business and policy-makers must move on, to find within themselves more developed emotions than fear or greed.

No one is safe from nature's savagery,not even the innocent. Only beauty is consistent. Gabrielle envisions a time when the Savage Garden will overtake civilizations and destroy it.

As civilization grows more complex, it is simultaneously becoming increasingly interrelated. We are converging upon ourselves, and this is forcing us to relate.

Civilization is the sum total of all those activities that allow men to transcend mere biological existence and reach for a richer mental, aesthetic, material, and spiritual life.

The law should be the point at which savagery ended because civilization stood in its path.

The measure of civilization in a people is to be found in its just appreciation of the wrongfulness of war.