Civilized Nations Quotes

• A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war.

  Herbert V. Prochnow

  Peace, War, Mars

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• Justice is the great interest of man on earth.

  Daniel Webster

  Men, Justice, Earth

  Oration on day of Justice Story's funeral, Boston, Mass., 12 Sept. 1845

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• Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Pregnancy, Society, Church

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• Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

  Samuel Johnson

  Names, Giving, Want

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Sacrifice, Important, Citizenship

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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• The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Law, Literature, Civilized

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• The man who stands upon his own soil, who feels, by the laws of the land in which he lives,-by the laws of civilized nations,-he is the rightful and exclusive owner of the land which he tills, is, by the constitution of our nature, under a wholesome influence, not easily imbibed from any other source.

  Edward Everett

  Men, Law, Land

  Edward Everett (1839). “Selections from the Works of Edward Everett: With a Sketch of His Life”, p.62

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• Wherever we direct our view, we discover the melancholy proofs of our depravity; whether we look to ancient or modern times, to barbarous or civilized nations, to the conduct of the world around us, or to the monitor within the breast; whether we read, or hear, or act, or think, or feel, the same humiliating lesson is forced upon us.

  William Wilberforce

  Thinking, Views, Looks

  William Wilberforce (2005). “A Practical View of Preferred Christians”, p.26, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Judaism is not a passive religion, but an active life factor which has coalesced
  with the national consciousness into one organic whole. It is primarily the
  expression of a nationality whose history for thousands of years coincides with
  the history of the development of a humanity and the Jews are a nation which,
  having once acted as the leaven of the social world, is destined to be resurrected
  with the rest of civilized nations.

  Moses Hess

  Expression, Years, Humanity

  Moses Hess (1943). “The Revival of Israel: Rome and Jerusalem, the Last Nationalist Question”, p.49, U of Nebraska Press

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• So much barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their inconvenience and that of their neighbors, a peculiar currency of their own.

  John Stuart Mill

  Country, Independent, Peculiar

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “Principles of Political Economy: Mill's Works”, p.251, VM eBooks

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• Torture, including practices like waterboarding, violates the legal and moral standards of all civilized nations.

  Jerrold Nadler

  Practice, Moral, Standards

  "No More Clever Wordplay on Torture" by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 15, 2007.

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• Whatever happens in the country, whatever warfare harasses our land, we will never relinquish our hold on Western learning. As long as this school of ours stands, Japan remains a civilized nation of the world.

  Fukuzawa Yukichi

  Country, School, Land

  Yukichi Fukuzawa, Eiichi Kiyooka (1966). “The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa”, p.211, Columbia University Press

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• I was standing next to a famed geo-politician when the first news of the Argentine attack [on the Faulkland Islands] was received, and heard him muse incredulously: "An old-fashioned naval battle. A war between two civilized nations, perhaps with even a declaration of war, and later a peace conference. Wow." No hostages, no nukes, no ideologies, no religious fanaticism; just a fair-and-square war over national interests - hard to believe, in this day and age.

  William Safire

  Religious, Peace, War

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• And in spite of everything, Ireland remains the brain of the Kingdom. The English, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish the over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget--the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature.

  James Joyce

  Perfect, Water, Humanity

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• A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Best Friend, Good Friend, Enemy

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• The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Father, Rome

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.170, Simon and Schuster

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• The social problem of the twentieth century is whether civilized nations can restore themselves to sanity after their nineteenth-century aberrations of individualism and capitalism.

  Albion Woodbury Small

  Aberration, Problem, Individualism

  1914 'A Vision of Social Efficiency', in the American Journal of Sociology, Jan.

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• All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth.

  Sam Harris

  Earth, Condemnation, Theology

  "Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim animus" by Glenn Greenwald, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2013.

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• Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for general security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our race.

  Daniel Webster

  Men, Race, Long

  Daniel Webster, Edwin Percy Whipple (2001). “The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster”, p.533, Beard Books

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• There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization.

  Felix Adler

  Civilization, Humanity, Growth

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• How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilized nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy!

  Charles Dickens

  Religious, Struggle, Blessed

  Charles Dickens (2016). “The Pickwick Papers: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.310, Pan Macmillan

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• Of all the nations in the Western world, the United States, with the most money and the most time, has the fewest readers of books per capita. This is an incalculable loss. This, too, is one of the few civilized nations in the world which is unable to support a single magazine devoted solely to books.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Book, Reading, Loss

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• Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.

  Elie Wiesel

  Children, People, Murder

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.180, Schocken

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• Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

  Daniel Webster

  Men, Justice, Together

  Daniel Webster, Edwin Percy Whipple (2001). “The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster”, p.533, Beard Books

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• Perhaps my dynamite plants will put an end to war sooner than your [pacifist] congresses. On the day two army corps can annihilate each other in one second all civilized nations will recoil from war in horror.

  Alfred Nobel

  Military, War, Army

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