Quotes about Civilization

When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he said, "It would be nice."

A cat is an example of sophistication minus civilization.

Our civilization, such as it is, was shaped by religion, and the men who aspire to public office anyplace in the free world must make obeisance to God or risk immediate opprobrium.

The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.

Are we a troop together or a band of savages?

Previous civilizations have been overthrown from without by the incursion of barbarian hordes. Christendom has dreamed up its own dissolution in the minds of its own intellectual elite. Our barbarians are home products, indoctrinated at the public expense, urged on by the media systematically stage by stage, dismantling Christendom, depreciating and deprecating all its values.

What do I consider a teacher should be? One who breathes life into knowledge so that it takes new form in progress and civilization.

A forgiving God would be the noblest work of man. We accepted as proven that each stage of civilization creates its own God, and that as man ascends and becomes better his conception of the Unknown likewise improves. Thereafter we all became less theological, but I am sure more truly religious.

The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

Nonviolent nationalism is a necessary condition of corporate or civilized life.

Government should uphold-and not undermine-those institutions which are custodians of the very values upon which civilization is founded: religion, education and, above all, family.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.