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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"Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about."
"Is man’s civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?"
"There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing."
"Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love."
"Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere."
"The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization."
"The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization."
"Whatever fosters the growth of civilization works at the same time against war."
"Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviors by other, secular motives, would proceed unobtrusively. . . ."
"I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded."
"What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years."
"If a superior alien civilization sent us a message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades', would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here - we'll leave the lights on'? Probably not - but this is more or less what is happening with AI."
"Which is superior, the Constitution or Sharia law? In Sharia law by their teachings is superior to everything else, it replaces everything else, it replaces the Constitution itself. So, you can`t be assimilated into the American civilization and accept Sharia law as being superior to our Constitution. It`s antithetical to Americanism."
"My point is, as civilization is progressing, Mosaic law came down from the mountain, was handed to civilization, it emerged through the Greek civilization as the Greeks were developing their Age of Reason. And we're talking about the foundation of Western Civilization, and almost concurrently with that, Roman law was emerging as well."
"The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us"
"In North Africa they had the Arab with the gun and whip, but he could force people to do things ... and he accomplished a tremendous amount of extermination, but he certainly didn't advance that civilization very much."
"When the history of civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine."
"I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me"
"There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization."
"The world is ruled, and the destiny of civilization is established, by the human emotions."
