Civilization Quotes

Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

Frank Lloyd Wright

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government but civilization itself.

Gerald R. Ford, Inaugural Address, 9 August 1974

Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.

Charles Lindbergh

If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.

Stanley Garn

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.

William Feathe

Remember! Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights - Then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward, that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.

Endicott Peabody

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

Sigmund Freud, (Attributed)

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

Arnold Toynbee

What a time! What a civilization!

Cicero

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

William Jennings Bryan

Individual commitment to a group effort, that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Vince Lombardi

It is not too strong a statement to declare that this is the way civilizations begin to die... None of us has the right to suppose it cannot happen here.

Richard Milhous Nixon

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

Arnold Toynbee

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

Alfred North Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self - Righteousness - - Each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked - - Each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.

Herbert Butterfield

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

William James Durant

I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

Charles Lindbergh, Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper (letter to the editor)

The measuring rod of a civilization is the prosperity of the masses.

Albert & Emily Vail, Transforming Light (pg 254)

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

Walter Bagehot

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

Robert Ingersoll

The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.

Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life

Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future.

Bourke Cockran

Civilization is a slow process of adopting the ideas of minorities.

Anonymous

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Mark Twain

The fact is, that civilization 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 demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Oscar Wilde

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.

Herbert Spence

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.

Amos Bronson Alcott, Table Talk (1877)

Individual commitment to a group effort - That is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Vince Lombardi

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

Will Durant

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.

Jane Addams, Speech, Honolulu (1933)

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

Henry Kissinge

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Ayn Rand

Civilization has been thrust upon me... and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity.

Luther Standing Bea

Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

Agnes Repplie