Top 100 Civilized People Quotes
#1. It is how decent, civilized people behave, Captain Ransom. Though I suppose that to someone of your level of moral fortitude, it must seem remarkable.
Jim Butcher
#2. Perhaps the habit which distinguishes civilized people from others is that of discussion, exchange of opinion and ideas, the ability to differ without quarrelling, to say what you have to say civilly and then to listen civilly to another speaker.
Katherine Anne Porter
#3. The American press is a shame and a reproach to a civilized people. When a man is too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal, he becomes an editor and manufactures public opinion.
William T. Sherman
#4. The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.
Antoine Rivarol
#5. Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man.
Daniel Quinn
#6. The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture.
Fran Lebowitz
#7. Only the language of civilized people may be spoken, thus no German.
Anne Frank
#8. Civilized people - Muslims, Christians and Jews - all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.
John Ashcroft
#9. The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.
George F. Kennan
#10. The gentle art of gastronomy is a friendly one. It hurdles the language barrier, makes friends among civilized people, and warms the heart.
Samuel V. Chamberlain
#11. Civilized people can talk about anything. For them no subject is taboo ... In civilized societies there will be no intellectual bogeys at sight of which great grownup babies are expected to hide their eyes.
Clive Bell
#12. History reveals no civilized people among whom there was not a highly educated class and large aggregations of wealth. Large profits mean large payrolls.
Calvin Coolidge
#13. Now what happens?" asked the man in black.
"We face each other as God intended," Fezzik said. "No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone."
"You mean you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword and we'll try to kill each other like civilized people, is that it?
William Goldman
#14. You mean you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword and we'll try to kill each other like civilized people, is that
William Goldman
#15. The more civilized people are, the more honorable working hard is to them. As a result, the more civilized we get, the less we live.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#16. Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians, by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself. They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons lives from violence of any and every kind by all means within their power.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#17. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity
John Muir
#18. I have always been a friend to hero-worship; it is the only rational one, and has always been in use amongst civilized people - the worship of spirits is synonymous with barbarism - it is mere fetish ... There is something philosophic in the worship of the heroes of the human race.
George Henry Borrow
#19. All great philosophers, even the atheists, realized that one of the essential attributes of a civilized people is a belief that good will be rewarded and evil will be punished. In
Bill O'Reilly
#20. In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.
Orhan Pamuk
#21. Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
Bertrand Russell
#23. ... their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.
John Muir
#24. Primitive people alienate themselves in their mana, their totem; civilized people in their individual souls, their egos, their names, their possessions, and their work: here is the first temptation of inauthenticity.
Simone De Beauvoir
#25. As a so-called "civilized" people, and as members of a society in search of lasting peace in the world, we cannot remain callous to our responsibility toward nature and insensitive to the inherent rights of the animals.
Nathaniel Altman
#26. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior, but if we're civilized people, we publicly criticize that, and don't belong to those groups or don't associate with those people.
Rand Paul
#27. One of the things that first attracted me to chess is that it brings you into contact with intelligent, civilized people - men of the stature of Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, who was my part-time coach.
Magnus Carlsen
#28. Civilized people have exchanged some part of their chances of happiness for a measure of security.
Sigmund Freud
#29. I'm sure we can talk things out like civilized people.
John Wayne
#30. But there is a devil of a difference between barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and civilized people who apply them selves to everything.
Karl Marx
#31. Because way down deep they know that civilized people have to preserve rare birds.
E.L. Konigsburg
#32. It is only the warlike power of a civilized people that can give peace to the world.
Theodore Roosevelt
#33. Gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but I think civilized people don't buy gold, they invest in productive businesses.
Charlie Munger
#34. No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.
Karen Blixen
#35. Though we are politically enemies, yet with regard to Science it is presumable we shall not dissent from the practice of civilized people in promoting it
John Hancock
#36. I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized people, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of civilization.
Chester A. Arthur
#37. We are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour.
Tennessee Williams
#38. soldier's first duty, his reason for being, is not to fight. Fighting is the final recourse for any civilized people. His duty is not even to preserve the peace; that is a police officer's job,
Evan Currie
#40. The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.
Vincent Van Gogh
#41. Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.
Nicholas Meyer
#42. Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations - not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.
Elie Wiesel
#43. ...People so often ignored their gut because of social niceties and expectations. Luckily Dax didn't have that issue; he was barely fucking civilized.
Katie Reus
#44. The first purpose of clothes ... was not warmth or decency, but ornament ... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.
Thomas Carlyle
#45. People here always said to me, 'Why would you leave civilization to go to a place like Fiji?' Fiji is a far more civilized place than California or New York City.
Raymond Burr
#46. That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a non-threatening system for deciding between diverse interests, then voting, of course, can be regarded as a humane and civilized process.
Robert Musil
#47. How dangerous it is rashly to adopt the Mosaical institutions [Old Testament teachings of eye for an eye]. Laws might have been proper for a tribe of ardent barbarians wandering through the sands of Arabia which are wholly unfit for an enlightened people of civilized and gentle manners.
Gerald Heaney
#48. Why do people so love to wander? I think the civilized parts of the World will suffice for me in the future.
Mary Cassatt
#49. It would seem, from this, that the people of Omanorion had mastered the ultra-civilized art of minding their own business.
Clark Ashton Smith
#50. Perhaps only when people can enjoy their differences as a resource of cultural enrichment do they become truly civilized.
Herb Kawainui Kane
#51. Fundamentalist Christianity appeals to pre-civilized, prudish tribal people who are not ready for urban feudal pleasures.
Timothy Leary
#52. Neither civilized reason nor Christian love would cause any of those people to treat you as they presumably wanted to be treated; only the fear of your power to retaliate would cause them to do that, or to seem to do it, which was (and is) good enough.
James Baldwin
#53. We can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global community where the basic needs of all the Earth's people are satisfied, and a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. This is entirely doable.
Lester R. Brown
#54. The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities of what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what's in or what's out. This is not an easy job.
Albert Hadley
#55. Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
Walter E. Williams
#56. I had come to the conclusion that I must really be French, only no one had ever informed me of this fact. I loved the people, the food, the lay of the land, the civilized atmosphere, and the generous pace of life.
Julia Child
#57. Just now one of the significant historical roles of the primal people of the world is not simply to sustain their own traditions, but call the entire civilized world back to a more authentic mode of being.
Thomas Berry
#58. Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray, and Diet Coke, it has become routine for people in the civilized world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once.
Dave Barry
#59. Over-sentimentality, over-softness, in fact washiness and mushiness are the great dangers of this age and of this people. Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.
Theodore Roosevelt
#60. ...Don't you ever get the feeling that for all that people try to be so civilized and sophisticated, we're really just animals pretending to be human?
Marie Zhuikov
#61. You have spent most of the past sixteen or more years learning to read and write. People who can do those things well, as you can, are miracles and, in my opinion, entitle us to suspect that we may be civilized after all.
Kurt Vonnegut
#62. If a nation and any nation on this earth could raise up the standard of personal responsibility in their society, you will in no time see a nation of virtuous people, developed and civilized.
Sunday Adelaja
#63. The American people expect the United States to keep terrorists where they belong, apart from civilized society and outside of America's borders
Eric Cantor
#64. The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.
Adam Smith
#65. As we become civilized we are governed less by persons and more by principles ... The best of all leaders is the man who teaches people to lead themselves.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#66. I understand that art is a necessary component of a civilized society, but you cannot just go around shooting people. That's going to be a problem.
Kevin Wilson
#67. What's the good of being civilized, that's what I'd like to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can't.
Diana Wynne Jones
#68. I can't tell you why I was in love with her. People didn't require that much as they do now. Folks were expected to be civilized to one another, honest, and - and clear. You relied on people being what they said they were, because there was no other way to survive.
Toni Morrison
#69. There's a hollowness to civilized life. It doesn't appeal to people, and some people react with extreme violence.
John Zerzan
#70. It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.
Henry Louis Gates
#71. Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race or people, barbaric or civilized
Hugh Hammond Bennett
#72. Iraq is a very important part of securing the homeland, and its a very important part of helping change the Middle East into a part of the world that will not serve as a threat to the civilized world, to people like
or to the developed world, to people like
in the United States.
George W. Bush
#73. He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.
Albert Speer
#74. not trouble his head about them; he knew that Zamora's religion, like all things of a civilized, longsettled people, was intricate and complex, and had lost most of the pristine essence in a maze of formulas and rituals.
Robert E. Howard
#75. Very good training to just be a person is growing up in Canada. People say a lot of things about Canada, like that it's boring, but if you look around the world, you can praise boring. It's a very civilized place to grow up. I'm very proud of it.
Mike Myers
#76. I ask you to forgive me for not fulfilling some hopes of those people who believed that we would be able to jump from the totalitarian past into a bright, rich and civilized future in one go.
Boris Yeltsin
#77. Philosophers of genius, children, and the people are equally wise - because they ask equally foolish questions. Foolish to a civilized man who has a well-furnished European apartment, with an excellent toilet, and a well-furnished dogma.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
#78. If you can't experience the humanity of people who don't look like you, you're not civilized enough to be an officer of the peace.
Ann Medlock
#79. No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
Theodore Roosevelt
#80. In savage countries they eat one another, in civilized they deceive one another; and that is what people call the way of the world!
Arthur Schopenhauer
#81. If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#82. Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized.
Albert Einstein
#83. Even today, the politics of religion does not allow the subcontinent to become civilized and its people to become truly educated.
Taslima Nasrin
#84. Our government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free, that civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against abuse of freedom.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#85. The civilized want people to make their living individually, and they want them to live separately, behind locked doors - one family to a house, each house fully stocked with refrigerators, television sets, washing machines, and so on.
Daniel Quinn
#86. Has there ever been an age so rife with neurotic sensibility, with that state of near shudders, or near hysteria, or near nausea, much of it induced by trifles, which used to belong to people who were at once ill-adjusted and over-civilized?
Louis Kronenberger
#87. This is the way a civilized society begins to devour itself. By allowing our political leaders and law enforcement officials to scapegoat one segment of our population - to turn innocent people into targets of suspicion, into the enemy - we demean all that is good and decent about our nation.
Arsalan Iftikhar
#88. Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized," Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was "sinister", a symptom of "our stupendous ignorance.
Timothy Egan
#89. The Roman historian Plutarch estimated that the civilized Romans under Julius Caesar, in his decade-long campaign in Gaul, destroyed 800 towns and villages and enslaved 3 million people.
Mark Kurlansky
#90. This drove home to me how barbaric our own medicine and our own customs are in the "civilized" world, where we put ill or demented people away and try to forget them.
Oliver Sacks
#91. And we'll punish the people who don't conform. Not bodily of course. This is a civilized country.
Lauren Oliver
#92. Once again it is demonstrated that people do not love their chains or their jailers,-and that the aspiration for a civilized life - that "universal eligibility to be noble," as Saul Bellow's Augie March so imperishably phrases it - is proper and common to all.
Christopher Hitchens
#93. No, we aren't civilized, even in our business suits and high heels. People are as mean as ever, and as predictable. Underneath it all, we are not so different from what lurks in the wild, perhaps we're worse.
Donna Lynn Hope
#94. Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar; it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns.
George Gilder
#95. We are the civilized world, you and I. A few dozen people, with our learning. As long as we continue to stroll through my garden arm in arm, civilization will continue.
Iain Pears
#96. Most of us, in our civilized society, rely too heavily on reasoning capacity to make things happen. We've been raised to believe that logic will prevail. Logic, in and of itself, will rarely influence people. Most often logic doesn't work.
Herb Cohen
#97. We are living in an increasingly feminized society. Some people view that as an increasingly civilized society, but it has left our boys with deep desires for honor but few outlets for displaying it appropriately.
Cindy Rollins
#98. From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and Christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy.
John Quincy Adams
#99. Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people.
Cesar Chavez
#100. Any civilized administration, however organized, prefers its own good to that of the people ...
Charles Fourier
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