1,222 Quotes About Civilization

We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.

I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilizations out onto other planets, even though they may be utterly uninhabited.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization.

In Kali yuga, whole atmosphere is surcharged with faithlessness, Material sense gratification is standard of civilization.

It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.

It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilization--the Urim and Thummim of respectability. . . . So strongly do we feel on this point, indeed, that we are almost inclined to consider all who possess really well-conditioned umbrellas as worthy of the Franchise.

This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.