Civilization Quotes

"A culture is made -- or destroyed -- by its articulate voices."

"When humor goes, there goes civilization."

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

"We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others."

"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."

"Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer."

"Civilization and profit go hand in hand."

"Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself!"

"Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent"

"Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of civilization one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?"

"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."

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

"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct."

"The history of our civilization, the great advances that made it possible, is not a story of cynics or doom criers. It is a gallant chronicle of the optimists, the determined people, men and women, who dreamed great dreams and dared to try whatever it took to make them come true."

"Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the ''dragon,'' in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage."

"The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is and will always be a wild animal."

"Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized."

"To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level."

"We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way"

"No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive."