Civilization Quotes

Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

Without a woman we’d discuss racing cars and horses and tell dirty jokes; no civilization.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged.

The word was — civilization!

The propulsion by the universality of thought is the absolute worth of civilisation.

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend it.

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Speech is civilization itself.

Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds – a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents.

Long exile from Christendom and civilisation inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e., what is called savagery.