1,222 Quotes About Civilization

We didn't trudge through 3.5 billion years of evolution, so that we could carry on with the same freaking acts of recklessness and selfishness as we used to in the jungle.

Look at their arts, their power of turning stone into lifelike figures, and above all, the way in which they can transfer their thoughts to white leaves, so that others, many many years hence, can read them and know all that was passing, and what men thought and did in the long bygone. Truly it is marvelous.

If you want to make use of the advantages of civilisation, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilisation—you are done.

The most prominent members of civilizations are saints, heroes, and geniuses. The most prominent members of anti-civilizations are heretics, dictators, and sophists. The most prominent members of pseudo-civilizations are “trendsetters”, ”entertainers”, and “public intellectuals”.

It was nine o'clock, cloudy, and a little like one of those science fiction movies where a few survivors are clinging to the wreckage, living out their days in the dry husk of civilization.

Not just charity, even corruption begins at home.

I don't know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it's not so important. Once you've arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took.

Civilization has turned human beings into the worst thing to ever happen to planet earth.

Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They're the vessels into which human knowledge is poured.