1,222 Quotes About Civilization

If you take a high panoramic look above this world, you’ll see that this world is divided into fragmented branded truth zones: we live in a fragmented civilization with fragmented indoctrinations.

Strictly obeying a concept without thinking about whether it's compatible with the needs of the new time and age, takes civilization backwards not forwards.

Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.

Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.

Even if we're among the lucky few who benefit from civilization, we find ourselves curiously unsatisfied, plagued by stress, worry, and conflict... Like the addict who believes against all evidence that what he can't give up won't lead to suffering and death, our culture adheres to its ideas in spite of ample, clear evidence they will lead to suffering and death.

There is always a city. There is always a civilisation. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilisation, but to become that city, that civilisation, you once took a pickaxe and destroyed what you hated, and what you hated was what you did not understand.

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.

When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.