Top 100 Quotes About Civilisation
#2. Never too late. Shooting is prayer. And when civilisation shuts up shop, a gun'll be worth any number of university degrees.
David Mitchell
#3. Civilisation never dies, it may change, but it is eternal. Where the paddy field is born on the dry river bed of Titash, there begins another civilisation.
Ritwik Ghatak
#4. I like looking at the countryside as well as anyone ... a little countryside goes a long way, but it's almost like the DNA of a civilisation is in its cities.
Jonathan Meades
#5. A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#6. Just carrying a ruler with you in your pocket should be forbidden, at least on a moral basis. The ruler is the symbol of the new illiteracy. The ruler is the symptom of the new disease, disintegration of our civilisation.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser
#7. No civilisation can claim to have a monopoly on universal values and no one can claim to be always faithful to his own values.
Tariq Ramadan
#8. During the civilisation and development process of more than 5,000 years, the Chinese nation has made an indelible contribution to the civilisation and advancement of mankind.
Xi Jinping
#9. Our civilisation is haunted by the notion that the quickest way of doing anything is invariably the best.
George Orwell
#10. Letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.
Thomas Jefferson
#11. Each period of a civilisation creates an art that is specific in it and which we will never see reborn. To try and revive the principles of art of past centuries can lead only to the production of stillborn works.
Wassily Kandinsky
#12. As civilisation advances, the deities lessen in number, the divine powers become concentrated more and more in one Being, and God rules over the whole earth, maketh the clouds his chariot, and reigns above the waterfloods as a king.
Annie Besant
#13. Paris is the fountain-head of European civilisation, as Gomukhi is of the Ganga.
Swami Vivekananda
#14. But remember that words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen - to use an image you'll understand - it can happen that a civilisation can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of ... fact.
Brian Friel
#15. There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.
Francis Galton
#16. Thank God!' said Wimsey. 'Where there is a church, there is civilisation.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#17. What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilisation is a few hundred years old ... an advanced civilisation millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque
Carl Sagan
#18. The progress and civilisation of the human race simply mean controlling this nature.
Swami Vivekananda
#19. The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilisation, but it does not yet permeate it.
Victor Hugo
#20. Roving dogs do not indicate the civilisation or compassion of the society. They betray on the country the ignorance and lethargy of its members.
Mahatma Gandhi
#21. It is curious how, at every crisis, some phrase which does not fit insists upon coming to the rescue
the penalty of living in an old civilisation with a notebook.
Virginia Woolf
#22. Today, in the May Day, find a worker and shake his hand with gratitude! Without workers, no civilisation could be built!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#23. Every civilisation that disavows its barbarian potential has already capitulated to barbarism.
Slavoj Zizek
#24. Chemistry ... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#25. Doesn't civilisation mean keeping your temper when there is no reason for restraint?
Hanif Kureishi
#26. Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence - one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.
Terry Eagleton
#27. It seemed perverse to some, but for all their apparent militarism the Gzilt had remained peaceful over many millenia; it was the avowedly peaceful Culture that had , within living memory, taken part in an all-out galactic war against another civilisation.
Iain M. Banks
#28. In some ways, I lament the introduction of civilisation on such a huge scale, because it has given us a lot of room to abuse each other, which we continue to do.
Roy Harper
#29. Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race.
Alfred Russel Wallace
#30. The Bradshaws suggests an extraordinary civilisation that existed long before modern man reached the British Isles.
Richard Flanagan
#31. We don't really communicate [ ... ]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we've evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we've created. Perhaps it's a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is anyway.
Irvine Welsh
#32. The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to oneself, has been the markof high civilisation both on the part of individuals and communities.
Isaiah Berlin
#33. Finally, we might decide that civilisation itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population - weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example.
Susan Blackmore
#34. But the ear, let us not forget, starts operating on the forty-fifth day of the pregnancy of a woman. Seven and a half months advance over the eye ... (but) what do we do in our society, in our civilisation, to continue this process?
Daniel Barenboim
#35. So if we assume we are not the only civilisation in the galaxy, then at least a few others must have arisen billions of years ahead of us. But where are they?
Brian Cox
#36. All history shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last they entirely cease.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
#37. It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.
William Winwood Reade
#38. Sapping the foundations of civilisation, of authority, of other people's altars, spattering them with filth, winking jocosely at them only to justify and conceal one's own rottenness and moral poverty is only possible for a very vain, base, and nasty creature.
Anton Chekhov
#39. We are producing urban places which are disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilisation
Moshe Safdie
#40. If you're becoming weary and disillusioned with Australian values, Judeo-Christian values or Western civilisation, I recommend strangers - they're such a glorious, redeeming wilderness to wander into.
Michael Leunig
#41. The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.
Nikola Tesla
#42. The crossing of space ... may do much to turn men's minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety-value that is needed to preserve it.
Arthur C. Clarke
#43. Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#44. A great European federative system alone can be favourable to the development of civilisation.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#45. Modern war and modern civilisation are utterly incompatible ... one or the other must go.
Vera Brittain
#46. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunise yourself with art. And love.
Matt Haig
#47. Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.
Niall Ferguson
#48. Without the law, you can't have society. But without the arts, you can't have civilisation
Julian Burnside
#49. Women made civilisation impossible with all their "charm " all their silliness.
Virginia Woolf
#50. The realization of justice is, in the actual state of things, a matter of life or death for society and for civilisation itself.
African Spir
#51. Nonetheless, we offer our forgiveness. What is the point in being a superior civilisation if you can't do that once in a while? I
Alastair Reynolds
#52. It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.
Alain Ducasse
#53. [The Koran is one of] the most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known.
William Muir
#54. The opposite of war is not peace but civilisation, and civilisation is purchased with violence and cold-blooded murder. With war.
Nadeem Aslam
#55. What is civilisation? Idriss once remarked. It's a woman, free to live as she wants.
Gregory David Roberts
#56. Men are at every stage of evolution, from the most barbarous to the most developed; men are found of lofty intelligence, but also of the most unevolved mentality; in one place there is a highly developed and complex civilisation, in another a crude and simple polity.
Annie Besant
#57. We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.
Richard O'Brien
#58. Civilisation is hooped together, brought
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion ...
William Butler Yeats
#60. Marriage: This terrible insoluble problem of civilisation, which created all the evil. This unnatural state of union in disunion which exacted impossibilities and forced together elements absolutely and inherently antagonistic to each other!
Rosa Campbell Praed
#61. In times of prosperity we are apt to forget God; we imagine it does not matter whether we recognise Him or not. As long as we are comfortably clothed and fed and looked after, our civilisation becomes an elaborate means of ignoring God.
Oswald Chambers
#62. Throughout the history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition, the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition, the authoritarian tradition and the libertarian tradition.
Pyotr Kropotkin
#63. Civilisation and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life.
Ernst Haeckel
#64. The idea that war should be conducted within a moral framework may seem like a quaint medieval practice, but as speech separates humans from the apes, so morality separates civilisation from the barbarians.
Eric Corley
#65. Golf is an indispensable adjunct to high civilisation.
Andrew Carnegie
#66. History teaches us that humans do not change their civilisation after deliberation, or by their own willpower, but in the wake of chaos that they themselves have provoked.
Guillaume Faye
#67. The conquistadors and their followers were very rough people, and they were fixated on gold and silver. They were oblivious to the astonishing achievements of the Inca civilisation.
Peter Shaffer
#68. As we take stock on the morrow of victory, we shall find that nothing of real value to the human race has been destroyed. Our dead heroes will have won immortality. Civilisation will have gained new vitality. Humanity will have entered upon a richer heritage.
Horatio Bottomley
#69. The first requirement of civilisation is that men should be willing to repress their basest instincts and appetites: failure to do which makes them, on account of their intelligence, far worse than mere beasts.
Theodore Dalrymple
#70. Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.
Tacitus
#71. The Japanese keenly learned from Western civilisation in a bid to modernize and preserve the nation.
Akihito
#72. I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection.
- Hind Swaraj
Mahatma Gandhi
#73. The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.
Benjamin Disraeli
#74. Passion, intellect, moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.
Florence Nightingale
#75. Borne out of this, starting around the 17th Century was the Baroque era. It is my view that it is one of the architectural peak periods in western civilisation.
Harry Seidler
#76. At every stage of understanding the universe better, the benefits to civilisation have been immeasurable. None of those big leaps were made with us knowing what was going to happen.
Brian Cox
#77. There was no reason to deny humans the benefits of human civilisation, no matter what warlords, kings, emperors and even elected politicians thought about it. A society so primitive that it used gold as a means of exchange and practised the slave trade, didn't deserve to exist.
Christopher G. Nuttall
#78. It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.
Gregory Bateson
#79. Advice for a human
86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.
Matt Haig
#80. Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it.
David Fleming
#81. If the truth be told, we are a society that is dripping in racism. This is not in the least surprising. For the best part of two centuries, we British ruled the waves, controlled two-fifths of the planet, and believed it was our responsibility to bring civilisation to those who allegedly lacked it.
Martin Jacques
#82. If you wanted to feel you were still somehow in control of a ship or a fleet or even your civilisation, talking amongst yourselves seemed to be the way you convinced yourself of it.
Iain M. Banks
#83. Civilisation makes us all as alike as peas in a pod, and it is the very uncouth - uncivilised, if you will - element which individualises nations.
Alec-Tweedie
#84. The truth is that Islam itself was a barbaric reaction against that very humane complexity that is really a Christian character; that idea of balance in the deity, as of balance in the family, that makes that creed a sort of sanity, and that sanity the soul of civilisation.
G.K. Chesterton
#85. I think the degree of a nation's civilisation may be measured by the degree of enlightenment of its women.
Helen Keller
#86. Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software.
Greg Egan
#87. Saddam Hussein was fascinated by ancient Babylon and Assyria. He made money available to protect and develop the great archaeological sites. The great achievements of Mesopotamian civilisation were pressed into the service of the Ba'athist regime.
Neil MacGregor
#88. Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.
Al Gore
#89. Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation.
Mahatma Gandhi
#90. If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.
George Bernard Shaw
#91. The strangest thing of all for Milly was perhaps the uplifted assurance and indifference with which she could simply give back the particular bland stare that appeared in such cases to mark civilisation at its highest. It
Henry James
#92. Meddling is what we do. It's what defines us. Meddling gave us fire and tools and civilisation and the keys to the universe. Fingers will get burnt along the way, yes. That's the way of it.
Alastair Reynolds
#93. What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.
Matthew Arnold
#95. The reality, Haung knew, would be something quite different. From a distance, civilisation looks clean and desirable. Up close, the shine is dulled by self-interest and tarnished by greed.
G.R. Matthews
#96. Imagine a civilisation that's way in advance of us wants to communicate with us, and assist us in our development. The information we provide to them must reflect our highest aspirations and ideals, and not just be some crazy person's bizarre politics or religion.
Paul Davies
#97. Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it's a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.
Ian McEwan
#98. The future of our civilisation depends upon the widening spread and deepening hold of the scientific habit of mind.
John Dewey
#99. We have seen that improved agents of destruction advance production by continually enlarging its outlets. The security of civilisation has been assured neither by the arts of peace nor yet by those of war, but by the cooperation of both
Gustave De Molinari
#100. Science will provide the material basis for a spiritually mature technologically advanced civilisation, it will achieve its higher spiritual purpose of evolving all of humanity. No other spiritual, mystical or religious institution has ever been able to do this and never will.
Jonathan R. Banks
