Top 100 Quotes About Civility
#1. Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.
Benjamin Franklin
#2. All of us should banish hateful communications and practice civility for differences of opinion.
Dallin H. Oaks
#3. Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#4. Seattle is not an overly friendly city. It is a civil city, but not altogether friendly. People from outside mistake the civility for friendliness. Seattle is full of people who have their own lives to live. They won't waste their time being friendly. But they are civil.
Jonathan Raban
#5. As a sign of human nature, the pumpkin embodied unbounded lust or lack of civility; as a symbol of a place, it represented the untamed natural bounties of North America; and as an emblem of a way of life, it stood for a rustic peasant existence.
Cindy Ott
#6. Mother' (with a short scornful laugh), 'you will make me confess. The only time I saw Miss Hale, she treated me with a haughty civility which had a strong flavour of contempt in it. She held herself aloof from me as if she had been a queen, and I her humble, unwashed vassal. Be easy, mother.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#7. Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.
Irving Howe
#8. URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others.
Ambrose Bierce
#9. Wine to me is something that brings people together. Wine does promote conversation and promote civility, but it's also fascinating. It's the greatest subject to study. No matter how much you learn, every vintage is going to come at you with different factors that make you have to think again.
Robert M. Parker Jr.
#10. If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.
Theodore Roosevelt
#11. (Some people regard the astonishing collapse of manners and civility in our society as a superficial event. They are wrong. The fate of decorum expresses the fate of a culture's dignity, its attitude toward its animating values.)
Roger Kimball
#12. No greater glory can be handed down than to conquer the barbarian, to recall the savage and the pagan to civility, to draw the ignorant within the orbit of reason, and to fill with reverence for divinity the godless and the ungodly.
Richard Hakluyt
#13. Leaving the group, he reclined on a couch, drank morosely, and watched people. He noticed the games they played with one another. They put on masks of civility, all while spewing their venom.
Francine Rivers
#14. Civility is just lying to people about your true feelings. Hiding for personal gain.
Popular people, well, they're just the best liars.
Rick Remender
#15. He is a man-beast, carnivore incarnate, motivated by carnal avarice and wearing only the mask of civility.
She could sip from that cup.
It is his presumption that deters her: his belief that he has already caught Maud in his paw.
Emmanuelle De Maupassant
#16. It was always easier to be disgusted after the fact. It was easier to shake your head and be outraged, as if the outrage was proof of civility - a sign that the world hadn't died, that it could still scream out in horror, proof that its heart was still beating.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#17. We see a decline of civility, and, sadly, it's often modeled by the very people from whom we have the least right to expect it.
Max De Pree
#18. I regret not getting brutally forthright with human beings a hell of a lot sooner than I did. Civility and obliquity are wasted on people who will not make the effort to be harsher or stricter on their own gooey egos than they are on other people.
Kenny Smith
#19. Civility must be a natural thing; all the rest is considered etiquette. The path of moksha [ultimate liberation] means there must be simplicity. There should be no 'ghosts of etiquette' there.
Dada Bhagwan
#20. The people who are good at being civil often lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions often lack civility.
Martin E. Marty
#21. I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.
Mark Kingwell
#22. I disagreed. Therein lay the difference between Ted and me. To me, being visible meant you had lines. Definition. Boundaries. Social boundaries. Disregard those boundaries of civility, and you became just as invisible.
Eleanor Maclellan
#23. Our relationship now thoroughly ruined, with even civility destroyed between us, all I wanted anymore was the door.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#24. Man's civility is lagging behind his technological ability. It could mean disaster and catastrophe for the whole world. We're all sinners, everyone of us, and a radical change is needed for all of us.
Billy Graham
#25. Larry King's show got to be an increasingly lonely outpost of humane civility in a mephitic menagerie of hotheads, saber rattlers, cretins and crackpots.
Tom Shales
#26. Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, "What you are doing is none of my business" and "What I am doing is none of your business.
George F. Will
#27. [D]espite the patina of civility coating most of modern society, underneath it is a thick layer of savagery.
Gene Doucette
#28. Civility is the art and act of caring for others.
Deborah King
#29. As citizens we have to be more thoughtful and more educated and more informed. I turn on the TV and I see these grown people screaming at each other, and I think, well, if we don't get our civility back, we're in trouble.
Emmylou Harris
#30. Some of us love hockey not just for its ferocity and skill but for its underlying code of civility off the ice.
George Vecsey
#31. Women, who are a majority of the peoples of the earth, are indispensable to the accumulation of the kind of social capital that is conducive to development, peace, justice and civility.
Mahnaz Afkhami
#32. There is a mighty gulf between those who love and those who do not love God To the one class we owe civility, courtesy, kindness, even tenderness. It is only those who love the Lord who should find in our hearts a home.
Frederick William Robertson
#33. Verity, you have a choice," he said gently. "We eat, we talk, we pass the evening with an attempt at civility. Or we fuck. It's up to you.
Anna Campbell
#34. Kudj wonder if perhaps Mother right. Kudj wonder if civility only as strong as weakest person participating.
Sam Sykes
#35. Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.
Eli Roth
#37. While Obama, the olive-branch poseur, has called for a restoration of 'civility' in Washington and liberal elites whine and whinny about the need for 'no labels,' class-warfare demagoguery has metastasized unchecked.
Michelle Malkin
#38. In Charles Dickens's books I had to admire the way the meanest enemies spoke to each other, with what seemed to me to be the greatest civility.
Jane Hamilton
#39. It's too much to expect in an academic setting that we should all agree, but it is not too much to expect discipline and unvarying civility.
John Howard
#40. I know it's very 'old media' of me to admit this, but I am often unnerved by the lack of civility on the Web.
Willow Bay
#41. The fair Saxon man, with open front, and honest meaning, domestic, affectionate, is not the wood out of which cannibal, or inquisitor, or assassin is made. But he is moulded for law, lawful trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of children, for colleges, churches, charities, and colonies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#42. If we want to live freely and privately in the interconnected world of the twenty-first century - and surely we do - perhaps above all we need a revival of the small-town civility of the nineteenth century. Manners, not devices: sometimes it's just better not to ask, and better not to look.
James Gleick
#43. A classical liberal is someone who wants a society that maximizes peace, civility, tolerance, and well-being for everyone. One that opens opportunities for everyone to advance themselves.
Charles Koch
#44. Women's status in society has become the standard by which humanity's progress toward civility and peace can be measured."-Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images
Mahnaz Afkhami
#45. I cannot, will never, understand these couples who hate each other, who conduct open warfare in front of their children - the kind of people who have to drop the kids off at the end of the driveway in case they lay eyes on one another. At the very least, civility must reign.
John Niven
#47. Genuine tolerance does not mean ignoring differences as if differences made no difference. Genuine tolerance means engaging differences within a bond of civility and respect.
Richard John Neuhaus
#48. I think nonviolence and the mediation of conflict by means of respecting civility must be promoted. But being the kind of beings we [peoplep] are - wrestling with greed, and wrestling with fears and security, anxieties, wrestling with hatred that's shot through all of us - wars are here to stay.
Cornel West
#49. We need to seek wise leaders who will seek common ground among Americans instead of dividing us further for political gain. As citizens, we must embrace those who embrace ideas, thoughtfulness, civility and kindness to others no matter what their political beliefs.
James McGreevey
#50. Nice is a pallid virtue. Not like honesty or courage or perseverance. On the other hand, in a nation notably lacking in civility, there is much to be said for nice.
Molly Ivins
#51. Be wary of those propagating too much about liberty, ideology, and civility; they just might be oppressors in the making.
Aniruddha Sastikar
#52. 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.
Parker Palmer
#53. I am told that I had a bad temper, and remember being banished to the back hall until civility returned.
Paul D. Boyer
#54. Panic is rare, looting is essentially insignificant, people are not terrified and trampling each other to flee from a disaster scene, but in fact are trying to manage a situation. We may in fact revert to some sort of primordial civility.
Rebecca Solnit
#55. 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.
Liane Moriarty
#56. The time when freedom is no longer held in the highest regard is not during times of want or suffering, but during the era of civility, pleasure, and wealth.
Eric J. Martindale
#57. Patience is no small, fell-good personal quality. It is at the heart of diplomacy and civility, lawfulness and civil order. Without it, people can't work together and society can't function at all. With it, we create the possibility of peace between people and between nations.
M.J. Ryan
#58. Marriage is treated by all civilized societies as a peculiar and favored contract. It is in its origin a contract of natural law ... It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic.
Joseph Story
#59. The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him; and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.
Lord Chesterfield
#60. Most adults would not dream of belittling, humiliating, or bullying (verbally or physically) another adult. But many of the same adults think nothing of treating their adolescent child like a nonperson ... Adolescents deserve the same civility their parents routinely extend to total strangers.
Laurence Steinberg
#61. Almost every man we meet requires some civility,
requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion orphilanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#62. There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#63. A common civility to an impertinent fellow, often draws upon one a great many unforeseen troubles; and if one doth not take particular care, will be interpreted by him as an overture of friendship and intimacy.
Joseph Addison
#64. I'm attracted to polarizing characters who upend the civility of life.
Mike White
#65. I could not but wonder at the queen's unprecedented civility, until I realized with a flush of shame that it was my own improved behavior that motivated hers. So it is that we in life determine our own treatment.
Catherine Gilbert Murdock
#66. Words were insufficient for the elevation of his [Mr Collins'] feelings; and he was obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to unite civility and truth in a few short sentences.
Jane Austen
#67. The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.
Samuel Johnson
#68. I worry about how aggressive and vicious our discourse has become. I don't think all is lost, however. I believe that there are ways that we can get our public debates back on track, because civility and manners are a matter of choice.
Dana Perino
#69. Fear was a wonderful propellant, and such a strong exponent of survival, even at the cost of others. Civility, it seemed, was the first to perish in a disaster.
Andrew Barrett
#70. We need to create a society in which civility rules over cynicism and apathy.
Antanas Mockus
#71. Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse - constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility, and candor. However
Sam Harris
#72. Civility is perhaps a quaint notion but civility in Parliament is something we should always strive to uphold.
Jay Weatherill
#73. The civility we need will not come from watching our tongues. It will come from valuing our differences.
Parker J. Palmer
#74. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
Washington Irving
#75. Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.
E. M. Forster
#76. Courage, of all national qualities, is the most precarious; because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation; whereas industry, knowledge, civility, may be of constant and universal use, and for several ages, may become habitual to the whole people.
David Hume
#77. When you're going into an employment environment that looks pretty scary, it is easy to lose your moral compass, your decency, your sense of civility and your sense of community.
Henry Rollins
#78. For a person who promised hope and civility in politics, Mr. Obama has shown a borderline obsessiveness in blaming Mr. Bush.
Karl Rove
#79. Civility is not about dousing strongly held views. It's about making sure that people are willing to respect other perspectives.
Jim Leach
#80. My mother raised me to be polite, to be demure. I have long operated under the idea that civility is subservience. But it hasn't gotten me very far, that type of kindness. The world respects people who think they should be running it.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
#81. German civility, which often seems stiff to us, shows an attentive and touching respect for the person that I often prefer to our offhandedness.
Adrienne Monnier
#82. True respect means taking other people's beliefs seriously and assuming they are adult and intelligent enough to be able to cope with it if you tell them, clearly and civility, why you think they are totally, utterly and disastrously wrong.
Julian Baggini
#83. If you care about the points of agreement and civility, then, you had better be well-equipped with points of argument and combativity, because if you are not then the "center" will be occupied and defined without your having helped to decide it, or determine what and where it is.
Christopher Hitchens
#84. The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#85. Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady," he remarked on suitable occasion. "Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon's knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable.
Paramahansa Yogananda
#86. Elizabeth received them with all the forbearance of civility
Jane Austen
#87. While we face economic obstacles that challenge every decision made in Washington, decisions made merely for political gain must stop. It's time to restore civility in Congress. It's time for action where action is needed - all politics aside.
Nick Lampson
#88. An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
Roger Williams
#89. As we move into the twenty-first century, women's status in society will become the standard by which to measure our progress toward civility and peace.
Mahnaz Afkhami
#91. Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#92. Treating people fairly and with civility is not a bad thing ... It would be good for our country if political leaders actually took that to heart.
Jeb Bush
#93. She braced one palm on the wall and used the other to bring him inside her more forcefully, tearing away the last bit of civility between them. Her body yielded under his pummeling strokes. Stretching around him, drawing him in that much farther. She couldn't get close enough.
Cari Quinn
#94. The apartment is an oasis - of civility, kindness, and elegance.
Will Schwalbe
#96. People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government ... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well
Charles W. Colson
#97. Losers break the rules. There's no point in obeying them because if you obey the unwritten rules of civility, you're going to lose anyway. So why not just do what you can?' - Zachary Karabell
David Pietrusza
#98. All of civility depends on being able to contain the rage of individuals.
Joshua Lederberg
#99. I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion.
John Podhoretz
#100. I think it is important that we rebuild an atmosphere of forgiveness and civility in every aspect of our lives.
T.D. Jakes
