Civilization quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside civilization — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"For me, and for thousands with similar inclinations, the most important passion of life is the overpowering desire to escape periodically from the clutches of a mechanistic civilization. To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness."
"Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots"
"Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work."
"Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning."
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
"Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized."
"To be complex does not mean to be fragmented. This is the paradox and the genius of our Canadian civilization."
"The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers."
"The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the future of Christian civilisation."
"I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women."
"Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence."
"Cities are the least permanent things in our civilization."
"Civilization itself . . . can easily be swept aside when mob passions are aroused."
"You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense."
"The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not clothing."
"Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence."
"One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want."
"Every attempt, by whatever authority, to fix a maximum of productive labor by a given worker in a given time is an unjust restriction upon his freedom and a limitation of his right to make the most of himself in order that he may rise in the scale of the social and economic order in which he lives. The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization."
"Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?"
"In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?"
