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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"Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?"
"The mind left to itself creates monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness."
"If we don't change, if the egoic consciousness continues, I don't believe that humanity as a species can survive, or at least human civilization can survive, for another hundred years."
"A warming of this magnitude would risk the end of civilization as we know it by the end of this century."
"Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization."
"Whenever Nature's bounty is in danger of exhaustion, the chemist has sought for a substitute. The conquest of disease has made great progress as a result of your efforts. Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of the nation. Waste materials, formerly cast aside, are now being utilized."
"Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization."
"Offering thanks in the midst of tragedy is an American tradition, . even during a bloody Civil War."
"In a state of nature, the weakest go to the wall; in a state of over-refinement, both the weak and the strong go to the gutter."
"Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change."
"In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization."
"It's one of the bases of all human existence - the relation between parents and children, whether biologically or metaphorically. It's something we can never get away from, even in a civilization where we're controlled by robots. It's the basic relationship between mature people who represent paternal and maternal figures and young people. It's universal - it's part of human existence. It's always been that way, and it will always be that way if humans remain around."
"One of the biggest problems of our contemporary civilization is that there's been an interruption of transmission. People have no past in their present."
"Baroque civilization believed in two truths, which for a post-18th-century mindset are exclusive truths - we have to eliminate one to believe the other. They believed in the rational exploration of the universe, and they also believed that there was a hidden spiritual truth. Baroque thinkers were able to live the two at the same time. In any case, for me, it's necessary to live that way also."
"A society that feels itself too poor to afford the preservation of wilderness is not worthy of the name civilization."
"Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward."
"There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal."
"The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization."
"Any civilization that doesn't develop space travel dies."
"I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer space."
