Civilization Quotes

In his heart, mankind has never been able to evolve past the tribal stage. Civilization does not take the place of tribalism, but if it is well designed, it can control it.

How encouraging it would be to see the germ of civilization, rooted and grounded in hope, thus arise as it were by magic, and raising new feelings in the native mind, to humanize the barren desert. Nor would it at all be over-stepping the bounds of probability to expect, that within the short period of […]

Civilizations fall; cultures are exterminated.

The boons of civilization are so noisily cried up by sentimentalists that we are all apt to overlook its disadvantages. Intrinsically, it is a mere device for regimenting men. Its perfect symbol is the goose-step. The most civilized man is simply that man who has been most successful in caging and harnessing his honest and […]

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.

Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.

Civilization consists in the multiplication and refinement of human wants.