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

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

Henry Ellis, Psychologist

"Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity"

Will Durant, Historian

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

Thomas Sowell, Economist

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

Stephen Gardiner, Architect

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

Camille Paglia, Author

"Yet, history has shown that if material force can defeat some ideologies it can no longer obliterate a civilization without destabilizing the whole planet"

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Statesman

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

"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

"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

"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan"

Martin Luther King Jr., Minister

"If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace"

Franklin D. Roosevelt, President

"Civilization is what makes you sick"

Paul Gauguin, Artist

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

Franz Boas, Scientist

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

Herbert Spencer, Philosopher

"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

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

Agnes Repplier, Writer

"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

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

Arnold J. Toynbee, Historian

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

Friedrich Engels, Philosopher

"It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood"

Charles Eastman, Author

"Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities"

Mark Twain, Author

"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

"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

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

Ambrose Bierce, Journalist

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

Robert G. Ingersoll, Lawyer

"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

"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct"

Sigmund Freud, Psychologist

"You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way"

Will Rogers, Actor

"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

"Education is the transmission of civilization"

Will Durant, Historian

"If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win"

Thomas Sowell, Economist

"The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way"

Milton Friedman, Economist

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