Civilization Quotes

The foundation of all civilization is loitering.

Government should uphold-and not undermine-those institutions which are custodians of the very values upon which civilization is founded: religion, education and, above all, family.

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression. The Church and the State have always fraternally united to exploit the people.

There cannot be perfect civilization until Man realizes that the rights of every living creature are as sacred as his own.

Business as usual doesn't work, that we're in a time where we have to rethink a lot of the basic ground rules and assumptions of our civilizations.

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

If we are to preserve civilization, we must first remain civilized.

There is no salvation for civilization, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government.

I pray God that we shall never use our physical prowess to oppress the human race, but we will use our strength, physically, morally and otherwise to preserve humanity and civilization.

We can dream of an America, and a world, in which love and not money are civilization's bottom line.

Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

No civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural support systems. Nor will ours.

A log cabin symbolized the embrace between civilization and nature, humans literally wrapping the trees around them as they might draw on a coat and hat.

We must, then, apply the principle of Doubt to Civilization; we must doubt its necessity, its excellence, and its permanence.

We have always been taught that navigation is the result of civilization, but modern archeology has demonstrated very clearly that this is not so.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.

Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?

I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities.

Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.

If our civilization is destroyed, it will not be by his barbarians from below. Our barbarians come from above.

Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism

To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.

I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our modern civilization. But I believe they should be so regulated that they shall act for the interests of the community as a whole.

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.

Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.

There is such a thing as too much couth.

Civilization is hideously fragile... there's not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish.

Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.

I believe with all my heart that civilization has produced nothing finer than a man or woman who thinks and practices true tolerance.

Bushido is realised in the presence of death. In the case of having to choose between life and death you should choose death. There is no other reasoning.

We have always created - music, literature, art, dance. The art around us - or lack of it - may be a measure of how we're doing as individuals and as a civilization, so maybe we should be worried.

I think that if a person doesn't feel cynical then they're out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization - you can't just swallow it whole.

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization.

Artists are the radical voice of civilization.

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

At the heart of all that civilization has meant and developed is 'community' - the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother.

A healthy dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It's what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.

Each civilization has its own kind of pestilence and can control it only by reforming itself.

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

The United States, knowing no distinction of her own citizens on account of religion or nationality, naturally believes in a civilization the world over which will secure the same universal laws.

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting