Quotes About Civility

I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and -- and rational argument.

Argument should be polite as well as logical.

There are 435 members of Congress. There's one 'Morning Joe' show. Hopefully, we can keep hammering the argument that you can disagree with other people and have debates but remain civil.

Civility is the art and act of caring for others.

A winning wave, (deserving note.) In the tempestuous petticote, A careless shoe-string, in whose tye I see a wilde civility,-- Doe more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.

We need to regain the art of civil discourse and more practically, I don't think you change anyone's mind by calling them names.

And even under extreme tension, which he had been under, too, he had been polite, considerate, respectful, and kind at all times.

Overnight, all comment boards became civil, all posters held accountable. The trolls, who had more or less overtaken the internet, were driven back into the darkness.

We were destroying any sense of civility and decency the four of us still had. We were no longer brothers and sisters. We were members of a gang.

My own plan for the coming fourteen months is to knock on doors and stuff envelopes. Maybe even to wear a button. To try to accrete with others into a demographically significant mass. To try extra hard to exercise patience, politeness, and imagination on those with whom I disagree. Also to floss more.

If you are going to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don't Know--Especially When You're Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy.

I think that you can disagree with people and debate over their positions with issues without engaging in the politics of personal destruction.

Nathan kissed Madeline on the cheek and shook Ed's hand enthusiastically. He took an ostentatious relish in the civility of his dealings with his ex-wife and family.

You can get through life with bad manners, but it's easier with good manners.

Political civility is not about being polite to each other. It's about reclaiming the power of 'We the People' to come together, debate the common good and call American democracy back to its highest values amid our differences.

Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.

Shouting down and intimidating someone from speaking their mind is not exactly a Vermont town meeting value, nor should it be an American town meeting value.

If I identify with anything, it's being an American, which is why I despise how badly we've splintered as a country. The divisions between us aren't new, but the ways we deal with them are. We've lost the social norm of civility. I suspect what's changed is the attitude that we're all in this together. Now it's a me-against-you mentality, and we've turned into a country of aggressively poor losers and bombastic, graceless winners.

It would be nice if everybody who had something interesting to say about my work could say it politely and civilly, but it doesn't work that way... Sometimes people are just really nasty.

Etiquette does not render you defenseless. If it did, even I wouldn't subscribe to it. But rudeness in retaliation for rudeness just doubles the amount of rudeness in the world.

I still subscribe to the theory that Ronald Reagan once pronounced: that I will never speak ill will of my fellow Republican.

A lot of young girls think that the opposite of fake is rudeness. And just as ugly as fake is, so is saying whatever is on your mind because it's the truth.

In other words, if there is to be any chance at all of success, there is only one way to strive for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility, and tolerance, and that is decently, reasonably, responsibly, sincerely, civilly, and tolerantly.