civilization quotes

56 quotes

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

Benjamin Disraeli

I’ve been waiting over 40 years to come to Cyprus, and it has not disappointed – the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Crossroads of Civilization, and, I might add, a genuine strategic partner to the United States of America.

Joe Biden

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

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

Ray Bradbury

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Theodore Roosevelt

Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, we must not waver.

George W. Bush

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

George Orwell

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

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Benjamin Disraeli

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Thomas Sowell

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

Dalai Lama

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

Narendra Modi

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

Greta Thunberg

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

George Orwell

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

Thomas Sowell

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

Noam Chomsky

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

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Winston Churchill

I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.

Steven Wright

This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Elbert Hubbard

Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges – on gifts, trades, loans – and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.

Margaret Atwood

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

Margaret Atwood

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

Ray Bradbury

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

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

Will Rogers

All empires come to an end, and the American one is no exception.

Robert Kiyosaki

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

Karl Marx

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

Fidel Castro

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

John Ruskin

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

Thomas Sowell

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

John Muir

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Erma Bombeck

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

Will Rogers

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a Yeti.

Edmund Hillary

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

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

Helen Keller

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

David Hare

The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.

Herbert Hoover

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

George Orwell

About the idea of a clash between cultures, between civilisations, I don’t believe in it. It’s something some political leaders tried to use, and that the media tried and are still trying to sell us, in order to simplify the world and their work.

Paulo Coelho

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

Thich Nhat Hanh

I had faith in Israel before it was established, I have in it now. I believe it has a glorious future before it – not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.

Harry S. Truman

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

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Mark Twain

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

Stephen Hawking

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

Carl Sagan

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.

Albert Einstein

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

Oscar Wilde

God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

Aldous Huxley

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

Herbert Hoover

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Nikola Tesla

In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.

Nikola Tesla