quotations about civilization
The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately.
JAMES BALDWIN
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The Devil Finds Work
That which we call civilization is merely the accumulated debris of a chilling number of bad nights.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Fran Lebowitz Reader
A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
Civilization was a defense against nature's raw power.
GREGORY BENFORD
Foundation's Fear
Civilization sails prettily like a child's rubber balloon until it hits a sharp object; then it is likely to collapse like the balloon.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
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 helps the disabled and disables those who can help themselves.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
WILL DURANT
Caesar and Christ
Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
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 really like to pay taxes. It is buying civilization.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Some Table Talk of Mr. Justice Holmes
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
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
Civilization advances by free thought, free speech, free men.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE
"Church, Woman and State"
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
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
For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.
WILLA CATHER
"On the Divide,", The Troll Garden
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