Quotes About Civilization

The more primitive a language is the less it abstracts. [...] As the language with its people advances in civilization it classifies, i.e. abstracts and simplifies more and more; it sees common qualities and drops out those distinctions that do not subserve life. A similar process may be observed in the formation of what we call Parts of Speech.

No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down.

When a civilization does not support creativity it begins to falter. When it distrusts its gifted people, rather than encouraging them, a nation is at least in trouble.

Morelli got Briggs a glass. "Don't let the curtains on the windows and the toaster in the kitchen fool you. I'm even less civilized than she is.

The dead spacecraft in orbit have become a permanent fixture around our planet, not unlike the rings of Saturn. They will be the longest-lasting artifacts of human civilization, quietly circling the Earth until the sun turns into a red giant about 5 billion years from now.

Suicide is possible, but not probable; hanging, I trust, is even more unlikely; for I hope that, by the time I die, my countrymen will have become civilised enough to abolish capital punishment.

From a distance, the American political system is a remarkable success. We have accomplished the peaceful transfer of power for more than two hundred years, and that's unmatched by any civilization in human history. Up close, our political system still has all the ugliness and bad actors that you might suspect.

Execution as punishment is barbaric and unnecessary.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

We hear much of Bolshevism, much of labor unrest; at times, we hear the word 'revolution.' But these are but contagious diseases in the body of civilization, and I believe that the antitoxins of good cheer, mutual confidence, fairness and justice will ultimately cure these ills and make the world healthy and strong again.

The fall of Rome seemed unthinkable to people at the time but inevitable to historians reflecting upon it with the benefit of context.

This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

I love being immersed in nature, going to places in the world that are pristine and untouched by man. It's almost a religious experience when you go to a place like the Amazon, and there's no civilisation for thousands of miles.

The rule of law is crucial to a civilized society - so we should go out of our way to uphold and strengthen it to the extent possible.

In most major cities, you can find stores for urban homesteaders. They sell everything you need so that you won't need anything. Sort of a 'Take This Civilization and Shove It' starter kit.

He realized that the ritualized world he had dismissed as feminine was in fact civilization.

The aim of eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that done, to leave them to work out their common civilization in their own way.

At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.

Go to work! Go to work in the morn of a new creation... until you have... reached the height of self-progress, and from that pinnacle bestow upon the world a civilization of your own.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.

The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its leisure.

Material civilization, nay, even luxury, is necessary to create work for the poor. Bread! Bread! I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven!

I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country.