Civilization Quotes

When civilization ends, it ends fast.

Technology is not the measure of a great civilization.

Eating far too much food for too much money is the essence of civilization.

Civilization starts when we stop running. When we live together. When we stop sending people away from the world and from each other.

When a civilization acts in opposition to its instincts, it may be under the influence of something, or someone, new.

We’re going out there, we’re taking back what’s ours. Civilization. We will rise again. Only this time we won’t be eating each other.

The thing about civilization is, it keeps you civil. Get rid of one, you can’t count on the other.

Someday, you’re gonna run this place, and for your son to someday run it too, you got to understand what this ranch’s greatest enemy is. It’s not wolves, or drought, or blizzards, or Texas Fever. It’s other men. Man will choose to take what you’ve built rather than try and build it for himself. Every civilization in this world is built on top of the one they conquered. You go to Rome or Jerusalem or Paris, France and it’s cities stacked on top of towns stacked on top of villages on top of one man’s house built on top of one man’s cave. Wish it wasn’t so, but it is. Your enemies have got to be so terrified that their fear is greater than their greed.[to Jack]

It seems the farther we get from civilization, the more of its rules we leave behind. Its traditions. Its inhibitions. The farther west we travel, the more those rules and customs become a burden.

I thought we’d be killing each other by now, like civilized human beings.[to Augustin]

Civilization is just the lie we tell ourselves to justify our real purpose. We’re not here to transcend. We’re here to destroy.

Civilisation has always depended on a measure of elective ignorance.