"Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure."
Read quote
18 likes
Civilization quotes
Civilization
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Civilization
Browse quotes that often appear alongside civilization — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Civilization quotes (page 8 of 119)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Civilization is the intelligent management of human emotions."
Read quote
18 likes
"So long as Muslims continue looking towards Western civilization as the only force that could regenerate their own stagnant society, they destroy their self-confidence and, indirectly, support the Western assertion that Islam is a "spent force"."
Read quote
18 likes
"In our western civilization we have the glorious example, the great standard of perfection and the teachings of the Christ to guide us. He acts for us as Mediator between our personality and our Soul."
Read quote
17 likes
"Of all the works of civilization that interfere with the natural water distribution system, irrigation has been by far the most pervasive and powerful."
Read quote
17 likes
"The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed."
Read quote
17 likes
"This movement among the Jews is not new... This world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing... It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century."
Read quote
17 likes
"There is something about big cities that turns me on, and for whatever mysterious reason, places like New York and Paris inspire me. I think it's because cities represent civilization, and as crime-ridden and broken down as some of them are, it's still better than skipping through a meadow."
Read quote
17 likes
"While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil."
Read quote
17 likes
"It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilization--the Urim and Thummim of respectability. . . . So strongly do we feel on this point, indeed, that we are almost inclined to consider all who possess really well-conditioned umbrellas as worthy of the Franchise."
Read quote
17 likes
"Mark you, if you give up spirituality, leaving it aside to go after the materializing civilization of the West, the result will be that in three generations you will be an extinct race; because the backbone of the nation will be broken, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built will be undermined, and the result will be annihilation all round."
Read quote
17 likes
"Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation."
Read quote
17 likes
"The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally."
Read quote
17 likes
"Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization."
Read quote
17 likes
"Karl Marx was the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, overeducated brat who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people perished under Mao's tyranny. We will probably never know."
Read quote
17 likes
"The Lincoln Memorial is related to the toga and the civilization that wore it."
Read quote
17 likes
"Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence."
Read quote
17 likes
"I would have been dead if it weren't for that great gift to civilization from the Chemistry Department of Harvard, which was napalm, or sticky jellied gasoline."
Read quote
17 likes
"It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss or personal tragedy, that the spiritual dimension would traditionally come into people's lives. This is to say, their inner purpose would emerge only as their outer purpose collapsed and the shell of the ego would begin to crack open. 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?"
Read quote
16 likes
"I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilization of their complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation."
Read quote
16 likes