1,222 Quotes About Civilization

Civilization is the commercialization of survival.

The magic waters of a deep, deep well: the complete absence of anxieties, the value of patience, the love of life embedded in her soul.

The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.

Civilization transformed man from a food gatherer to a gatherer of pieces of paper: diplomas, employment contracts, money, etc.

Our Freedoms come from those that keep our beliefs, our ideology, and lifestyle safe. You may never know who they are but salute their presence. Their only glory is knowing we recognize their efforts even if they are but ghosts.

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

Civilization did not come with fire. It came with the discovery of how to use fire to heat water.

We remain part of the earth's ecosystem, and participate in the food chain whereby we kill and eat various plants and animals, while our bodies provide a fair field full of food for a great variety of parasites.

Speech, writing, music, painting and sculpture, dance, and the ordinary activities of everyday life are at once the most familiar and the most mysterious of all order-generating processes.