1,222 Quotes About Civilization

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.

A huge portion of what the civilized know more than the primitive is about the unnatural world.

It's probably not easy for a woman to understand what it's like to be a man. Imagine you're starving, and someone puts a huge buffet in front of you. There's delicious, mouth-watering food all around you, and it's really really hard not to eat it all. That's what it's like to be a man around attractive women. The urge to want to hump everything that moves is part of a man's natural programming. It's a deep-seated hunger. To suppress that hunger takes civilization and a lot of willpower.

Human societies have been trying to shape the behavior of their members for thousands of years. That is the main purpose of law, religion and education.

I've often heard people say, “Your country is beautiful, a virtual paradise.” When will the people of Indonesia be as beautiful as their land, with a civilization and culture that contributes to the greater beauty of humankind and no longer smothers and strangles the mind?

I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God.

A once-high society lowers itself when having little to no respect for even a decent honesty, and it's at its lowest when, at last, truth is frowned upon.

Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.

River with no border the forgetful hand of man Gather harvest from the fallow land Take all memory from it to speak of lonely travellers who hopelessly took orders From armies lined within them marching over fields and valleys As though they were a river not a woman nor a man not a place for which to answer but a cold and shapeless journey from the sea