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"I think... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of human nature that hardly lend themselves to that process."
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"Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell."

"I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt."

"If this is called civilization, then I am afraid humanity is no more civilized than the Tyrannosaurus Rex."

"A civilized society is formed when every individual in that society are bound to obey the rules and regulation which is for the benefit of their own society."

"The majority of India's adult and elderly population is too medieval to think as civilized, rational and progressive human beings."

"Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights."

"In the world of primitive savages, religion and bigotry go hand in hand. But, in the world of civilized humans, religion and reason must go hand in hand."

"Education is not the amount of information that is pushed into the brain and causes havoc there, undigested all through a lifetime. Education must be a symposium of life-building, character- making and assimilation of ideas in the pursuit of building a more harmonious, peaceful and truly civilized world."

"Libraries, museums, universities, everything we designed and built over six thousand years. Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They're the vessels into which human knowledge is poured."

"There is nothing more savage than modern civilization."
Explore more quotes by Tom Stoppard


"There are no commitments, only bargains. And they have to be made again every day. You think making a commitment is it. Finish. You think it sets like a concrete platform and it'll take any strain you want to put on it. You're committed. You don't have to prove anything. In fact you can afford a little neglect, indulge in a little bit of sarcasm here and there, isolate yourself when you want to. Underneath it's concrete for life. I'm a cow in some ways, but you're an idiot."


"I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that - even if it can't be quantitatively measured as other subjects - it's as fundamental to all education."


"It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them."


"A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself."


"We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else."


"If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything."
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