Civilized Society Quotes - Page 4

• The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.

  Edward Gibbon

  Rome, Europe, Curiosity

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”

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• The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Vigor, Aim, Civilised Society

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• Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.

  J. Maarten Troost

  Virtue, Civilized, Regard

  J. Maarten Troost (2004). “The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific”, Broadway

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• Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mirrors, Essentials, Use

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2634, Delphi Classics

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• In any civilized society, it is every citizen's responsibility to obey just laws. But at the same time, it is every citizen's responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  War, Responsibility, Marijuana

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• Every civilized society must disarm its citizens against each other.

  Garry Wills

  Gun, Citizens, Gun Control

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• But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers.

  David Hume

  Revenge, Islam, Hurtful

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on several subjects, etc. New edition”, p.135

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• The American people expect the United States to keep terrorists where they belong, apart from civilized society and outside of America's borders

  Eric Cantor

  America, People, United States

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• The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life.

  Desmond Tutu

  Mean, Reverence For Life, Death Penalty

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• She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilized society is insane. Money and so-called love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Depression, Two, Long

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.3771, Delphi Classics

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• A civilized society looks with horror upon the abuse and torture of children or adults. Even where capital punishment is practiced, the aim is to implement it as mercifully as possible. Are we to believe then that a holy God-our heavenly Father-is less just than the courts of men?

  Sidney Hatch

  Children, Father, Believe

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• For most of history, war has been a more or less functional institution, providing benefits for those societies that were good at it, although the cost in money, in lives, and in suffering was always significant. Only in the past century have large numbers of people begun to question the basic assumption of civilized societies that war is inevitable and often useful.

  Gwynne Dyer

  Money, War, Past

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• To inflict cruelties on defenceless creatures, or condone such acts, is to abuse one of the cardinal tenets of a civilized society - reverence for life.

  Jon Evans

  Life, Abuse, Society

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• I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good. . . . I hold then, that 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

  Color, Civilization, Two

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• I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Beauty, Art, Peace

  "Adventures of Ideas".

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• Love has an immense ability to help heal the devastating wounds that life sometimes deals us. Love also enhances our sense of connection to the larger world. Loving responsiveness is the foundation of a truly compassionate, civilized society.

  Sue Johnson

  Foundation, Connections, World

  Sue Johnson (2011). “Hold Me Tight: Your Guide to the Most Successful Approach to Building Loving Relationships”, p.9, Hachette UK

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• A first class system of early childhood education is the hallmark of a caring and civilized society.

  Andy Hargreaves

  Leadership, Learning, Caring

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• We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of #‎ libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.

  Philip Pullman

  Numbers, Library, Values

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• All of these riots around the globe are endangering the world. And mobs are always dangerous, destructive things that end society. Liberal policies promote mobs because liberals crawl on the mobs, the destruction wrought by the mobs to attain power. Tere's only one way to react to a mob to save civilized society, and that is to smash the mob. It is not to mollycoddle the mob.

  Ann Coulter

  World, Way, Destruction

  "Ann Coulter: Liberal Policies Led to U.K. Riots". "The O'Reilly Factor", www.foxnews.com. August 11, 2011.

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• A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

  Jeremy Bentham

  Animal, Suffering, Moral

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• In civilized societies, if you are offended by a cartoon, you do not burn flags, take up guns and raid buildings, chant death to your opponents, or threaten suicide bombings. You write a letter to the editor.

  Michelle Malkin

  Suicide, Writing, Gun

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• Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Weed, Flower, Pigs

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1935). “The Scarlet Letter (Sparklesoup Classics)”, p.24, Sparklesoup LLC

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• With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

  Charles Darwin

  Animal, Men, Theory Of Evolution

  "The Descent of Man". Book by Charles Darwin, February 24, 1871.

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• In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Men, Race, Fellow Man

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• In any civilized society the most important task is achieving a proper balance between freedom and order. In wartime, reason and history both suggest that this balance shifts in favor... of the government's ability to deal with conditions that threaten the national well-being.

  William Rehnquist

  Order, Government, Important

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