149 Quotes About Civility

The missing link between humans and apes? It's certainly those brutes who haven't yet learned to respect privacy.

A government of the people, a democracy, has room for peaceful civil disobedience—a practice that appeals to the humanity and sense of justice of the opposition (not defined as the 'enemy') and insists that we do all, in fact, belong to the beloved community.

The main point about civility is...the ability to interact with strangers without holdingtheir strangeness against them and without pressing them to surrender it or to renouncesome or all the traits that have made them strangers in the first place.

The most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. Rather it is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems.

Virtue became less the harsh and martial self-sacrifice of antiquity and more the modern willingness to get along with others for the sake of peace and prosperity.

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

The candor of a civilized mind comes from the ability to question self before action; the reverse is the case for the creative mind; act first, then question later.

It is contrary to the usual practice of professional men to give their opinions upon each other's work unless regularly called upon in the way of their profession.

Why is civility important? Because civilized society depends upon it.