Civilization Quotes: Wisdom and Insights from the Ages

"Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime"

Victor Hugo, Author

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

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"The family is the nucleus of civilization"

Will Durant, Historian

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

Will Durant, Historian

"The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

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

Thomas Sowell, Economist

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

Camille Paglia, Author

"All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution"

Henry Ellis, Psychologist

"I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

"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"

Henry David Thoreau, Author

"The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization"

Franz Boas, Scientist

"Back through the ages of barbarism and civilization, in all tongues, we find this instinctive pleasure in the imitative action that is the very essence of all drama"

George P. Baker

"From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization"

Friedrich Engels, Philosopher

"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, Architect

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be"

Thomas Jefferson, President

"Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization"

Ambrose Bierce, Journalist

"Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock"

Sigmund Freud, Psychologist

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

Sigmund Freud, Psychologist

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

Robert G. Ingersoll, Lawyer

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

Vince Lombardi, Coach

"Civilization is what makes you sick"

Paul Gauguin, Artist

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization"

Georges Clemenceau, Leader

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

Stephen Gardiner, Architect

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

Alfred North Whitehead, Mathematician

"We've persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people - a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it's time to turn the page"

Barack Obama, President

"Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members"

Pearl S. Buck, Novelist

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men"

Ayn Rand, Writer

"The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture"

Antonio Tabucchi, Writer

"It's the Law of God that gave the stability to Christian civilization"

Randall Terry, Celebrity

"No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing"

Otto von Bismarck, Leader

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

Herbert Spencer, Philosopher

"History shows us that other highly developed forms of civilization have collapsed. Who knows whether the same fate does not await our own?"

Christian Lous Lange, Politician

"Civilization and profit go hand in hand"

Calvin Coolidge, President

"Thus, it was to seek true civilization and true justice for all the peoples of the world, and to view this as the destruction of personal freedom and respect is to be assailed by the hatred and emotion of war, and to make hasty judgments"

Hideki Tojo, Soldier

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

Edward Abbey, Author

"Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity"

L. Frank Baum, Author

"Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others"

Alexander Herzen, Journalist

"Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days it'd die of remorse on the third"

Malcolm Lowry, Poet

"The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization"

Karen Horney, Psychologist

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

Agnes Repplier, Writer

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