1,222 Quotes About Civilization

I consider that there are different degrees of civilization and there are many different ways of expressing it. But one is civilized or is not.

It's fitting, then, that we begin this exploration of ourselves and of the world with music, and more specifically with a musical quality called vibrato. This pulsation that wells up within the sounded note can lead us to what is most spontaneous and creative in human life, and possibly even to deeper mysteries--to powers of knowing and doing which we have lost or given away during the epoch of civilization, and which perhaps we may now regain.

Nature is rarely allowed to enter the sacred portals of civilized society.

Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.

Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.

Every mob, in its ignorance and blindness and bewilderment, is a League of Frightened Men that seeks reassurance in collective action.

We all live under the constant threat of our own annihilation. Only by the most outrageous violation of ourselves have we achieved our capacity to live in relative adjustment to a civilization apparently driven to its own destruction.

Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians, who find it less trouble to provide a new, cheap, and shoddy thing than to get the full use and full pleasure out of a finely-made and carefully-chosen old one.

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.