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Civilization Quotes


"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."


"Justice has nothing to do with victor nations and vanquished nations, but must be a moral standard that all the world's peoples can agree to. To seek this and to achieve it - that is true civilization."


"Not a single piece of material culture - not a single object - has been found at Giza that can be interpreted to come from a lost civilization."


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


"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."


"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."


"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society."


"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."


"America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization."


"The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian."


"I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization."


"We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting."


"If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts."


"The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization."


"A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence."


"Advanced weaponry, victories in battle and space travel do not an advanced species or civilization make."


"You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn."


"Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male."


"Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others."


"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization."


"Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down."


"Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark."


"Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest."


"The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind."


"When the toddler does something and there are consequences for his action civilization begins."


"The development of civilization was marked by constant changes. This will continue " therefore, the future will belong to people ready for change."


"The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps."


"I would seriously question whether anybody is really foolish enough to really say what they mean. Sometimes I think that civilization as we know it would kind of break down if we all were completely honest."



"Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists."


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


"A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values."


"Civilization in its present form hasn't got long."


"We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse."



"The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization."


"The last struggle for our rights, the battle for our civilization, is entirely with ourselves."


"There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a Yeti."


"You know, our sense of individuality is just the number one target of civilization."


"The first requisite of civilization is that of justice."


"It's just a show. It's not the end of Western Civilization. It's chewing gum."


"To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization."


"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor."


"Hold fast to the Bible. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization and to this we must look as our guide in the future."


"Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."


"Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvellous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."


"Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent."


"Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and Englishman all passed, leaving each his legend; and a brilliant and more or less feudal civilization with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with the economic system upon which it rested."


"The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture."
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