111 Quotes About Civilisation

There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.

Drugs,” Estelle said. “Money and drugs, and that’s the history of civilization.

Cruelty is an aspect of civilisation, I say. Cruelty is part of power; it’s like the army; you bring it out when you need to. … What he calls cruelty I call the discipline of self-criticism. A woman who loves herself is unprotected. She will be invaded, put in chains, left there in the primordial swamp to love her heart out. 119-120

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature is dumb, science is crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows on the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time.

Although we live in a civilised society, the business world remains a jungle.

The thumb may look like an ordinary finger, truly it is a miraculous gift from God! If all the fingers were long and straight, it would be impossible for us to work, hold or catch anything easily! If there was no thumb, then human civilisation would lag way behind!

Those who looked with revulsion at the oppressive might of her arms, were obliged to marvel at the egalitarian nature of her social programmes.

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we, too, would become Taliban.