quotations about civilization
All times, we assume, are different; we therefore have nothing to learn from our elders, nothing to teach our children. Civilization is thus reduced to a sequence of last-minute improvisations, desperately building today out of the wreckage of yesterday.
WENDELL BERRY
A Continuous Harmony
I really like to pay taxes. It is buying civilization.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Some Table Talk of Mr. Justice Holmes
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
We must regard the raw material, as I have called it, of civilization as being now, in all probability, at its best, and henceforth for the amelioration of mankind we must look to the perfection of manufacture.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence -- whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
letter to H. P. Lovecraft, Aug. 1930
The human race is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive night ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization.
JACK LONDON
The Scarlet Plague
I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Discourse on Inequality
Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
TED CHIANG
Stories of Your Life and Others
Long exile from Christendom and civilisation inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e., what is called savagery.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
EMILE ZOLA
Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
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
Our civilization depends largely on paper.
PLINY THE ELDER
Natural History
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down
BILLY BRAGG
"Christ for President"
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
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
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
It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.
NEIL GAIMAN
Good Omens
Civilization advances by free thought, free speech, free men.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE
"Church, Woman and State"