Civilized Society Quotes - Page 2

• Thousands of years ago the question was asked: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Brother, Years, Way

  "The Issue". Eugene V. Debs' speech in Girard, Kansas, May 23, 1908.

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• Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, Opinion, Moral

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories”, p.141, Penguin

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• Bigotry toward any faith community cannot have any place in civilized society anywhere in the world.

  Feisal Abdul Rauf

  Community, World, Bigotry

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• No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Inspirational, Humanity, Society

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Essays, lectures, addresses”, p.427, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• Libel actions, when we look at them in perspective, are an ornament of a civilized society. They have replaced, after all, at least in most cases, a resort to weapons in defense of a reputation.

  Henry Anatole Grunwald

  Perspective, Ornaments, Defense

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• Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.

  Walter Gropius

  Guiding Principles, Design, Intellectual

  "Form and Function", www.interviewmagazine.com. July 23, 2009.

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• Marriage is treated by all civilized societies as a peculiar and favored contract. It is in its origin a contract of natural law . . . . It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic.

  Joseph Story

  Family, Children, Law

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• Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized society.

  Joan Ganz Cooney

  Children, Society, Cherish

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• Art is a necessity - an essential part of our enlightenment process. We cannot, as a civilized society, regard ourselves as being enlightened without the arts.

  Ken Danby

  Art, Enlightenment, Essentials

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• There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.

  Walter Lippmann

  Travel, Discovery, Soul

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• Standing up to bullies is the hallmark of a civilized society.

  Robert Reich

  Bully, Hallmark, Civilized Behavior

  "Break the Koch Machine" by Robert Reich, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 27, 2014.

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• If one benefits tangibly from the exploitation of others who are weak, is one morally implicated in their predicament? Or are basic rights of human existence confined to the civilized societies that are wealthy enough to afford them? Our values are defined by what we will tolerate when it is done to others.

  William Greider

  Rights, Done, Benefits

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• In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Coats, May

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1825). “The Table Talk of Dr. Johnson: Comprising Opinions and Anecdotes of Life and Literature, Men, Manners, and Morals”, p.119

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• There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.

  John C. Calhoun

  Community, Facts, Wealthy

  John C. Calhoun “The Works of John C. Calhoun Volume 2”, Jazzybee Verlag

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• A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science. With modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search.

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

  Powerful, Past, Ethos

  "My Dearest Daughter: A letter from the Death Cell". Book by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, p. 15, 2007.

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• My position as regards the monied interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run, identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand; for property belongs to man and not man to property.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Running, Real, Men

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910

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• These are the now-endangered markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers safety and compensation laws, pure foods and safe drugs, Social Security, Medicare and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels.

  Bill Moyers

  Children, Law, Safety

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• We will not make inroads into the gun-violence problem until we acknowledge the underlying causes of youth behavior today, compared to yesterday. ... we must come to the realization that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society. It's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.

  Walter E. Williams

  Gun, Law, Yesterday

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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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• Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.

  Willard Gaylin

  Quality, Guilt, Essentials

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• It seems important that the social value factor be more generally recognized as a powerful causal agent in its own right and something to be dealt with directly as such. No more critical task can be projected for the 1970s than that of seeking for civilized society a new, elevated set of value guidelines more suited to man's expanded numbers and new powers over nature, a frame of reference for value priorities that will act to secure and conserve our world instead of destroying it.

  Roger Wolcott Sperry

  Powerful, Men, Numbers

  "Science and the Problem of Values". Book by Roger Wolcott Sperry, p. 119, 1972.

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• I think that the essence of a free and civilized society is that everything in it should be subject to criticism, that all forms of authority, should be treated with a certain reservation.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Thinking, Essence, Criticism

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• We create institutions and policies on the basis of the way we make assumptions about us and others. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us. So we have had poor people around us. If we had believed that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have created appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Business, Believe, People

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• Poverty is the openmouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough.

  Henry George

  Society, Poverty, Hell

  Louis Freeland Post, Henry George (1899). “The Single Tax: An Explanation, with Colored Charts and Illustrated Notes of the Land, Labor, and Fiscal Reform Advocated by Henry George”

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• The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God: the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues-these these never can be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how any civilized society can exist without them.

  Joseph Story

  Responsibility, Punishment, Community

  Joseph Story (1833). “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution”, p.699

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