quotations about civilization
Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence -- whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
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letter to H. P. Lovecraft, Aug. 1930
There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History
I really like to pay taxes. It is buying civilization.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Some Table Talk of Mr. Justice Holmes
Civilization is sterilization.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Typee
All civilization in a sense exists only in the mind. Gunpowder, textile arts, machinery, laws, telephones are not themselves transmitted from man to man or from generation to generation, at least not permanently. It is the perception, the knowledge and understanding of them, their ideas in the Platonic sense, that are passed along. Everything social can have existence only through mentality.
ALFRED L. KROEBER
The Superorganic
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
EMILE ZOLA
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilisation is a few hundred years old ... an advanced civilisation millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque.
CARL SAGAN
Cosmos
Our civilization depends largely on paper.
PLINY THE ELDER
Natural History
Civilization advances by free thought, free speech, free men.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE
"Church, Woman and State"
Civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
TED CHIANG
Stories of Your Life and Others
Vestiges of obliterated civilizations cover the earth; no savage but has camped upon the sites of proud and populous cities; no desert but has heard the statesman's boast of national stability. Our nation, our laws, our history--all shall go down to everlasting oblivion with the others, and by the same road. But I submit that we are traveling it with needless haste.
AMBROSE BIERCE
A Cynic Looks at Life
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down
BILLY BRAGG
"Christ for President"
Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilization, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
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
Christianity, Diplomacy and War
It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.
NEIL GAIMAN
Good Omens
Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis