Civilization Quotes

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

Arnold Toynbee

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life blood of real civilization.

G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (1942)

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 14

It is the first step of wisdom to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the society in which they occur.

George Whitehead

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Will Durant

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

Hunter S. Thompson

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Arnold Toynbee

When vultures watching your civilization begin dropping dead, it is time to pause and wonder.

David Browe

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

William James Durant