Civilized Quotes - Page 3

• We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life.

  Rachel Carson

  Men, Rivers, Important

  Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson (1972). “The house of life: Rachel Carson at work”

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• As a man develops, he places a greater value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values his own rights he begins to value the rights of others. And when all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Men, Rights, Giving

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.196, Library of Alexandria

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• The reason the lawyers lead the line to the guillotine or the firing squad is that, while law is supposed to be a device to serve society, a civilized way of helping the wheels go round without too much friction, it is pretty hard to find a group less concerned with serving society and more concerned with serving themselves than the lawyers.

  Fred Rodell

  Law, Squad, Lines

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• It's so much more interesting to study a ... damaged world. I find it difficult to learn anything in a place that's too civilized.

  Brian Herbert

  Interesting, World, Study

  Brian Herbert, Kevin Anderson (2003). “Dune: House Atreides”, p.30, Spectra

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• We have been civilized for a thousand millennia. We have histories of hundreds of those millennia. We have tried everything. Anarchism, in all its forms, with the rest. But I have not tried it. They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Single Life, Sun, Life Is

  "The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

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• I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming master of his fate and captain of his soul.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Religious, Ignorance, Fate

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• The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Men, Law, Desire

  "Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France". Speech to the National Convention, April 24, 1793.

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• The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Generosity, Events, Meals

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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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• During practically all of my public life, I have been a sincere advocate of an agreement between the leading nations of the world to set up all the necessary international machinery that would bring about a practical abolition of war between civilized nations.

  George W. Norris

  War, Agreement, Civilized Nations

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• To realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Men, Barbarians, Realizing

  "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy". Book by Joseph Schumpeter, Part IV, Chapter XX, Section III, 1942.

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• As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I became civilized.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Children, Native American, Giving

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• It is in vain for us to devise schemes by which competition can be put out of civilized life. Competition is the condition of life.

  Lyman Abbott

  Competition, Vain, Schemes

  Lyman Abbott (1899). “The Life that Really is”

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• So much of 'normal, civilized' life is bull that you can't imagine... What frightens you, doesn't frighten me, what frightens me, you'd laugh at.

  James Clavell

  Laughter, Fear, Laughing

  "Noble House". Book by James Clavell, April 1981.

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• Science and technology contribute to the fast-expanding vocabularies of all living civilized tongues at a faster rate than all other fields of human endeavor put together.

  Mario Pei

  Technology, Vocabulary, Together

  Mario Pei (1965). “The Story of Language”

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• In any democratic, civilized - even non-democratic nations, if you are a nation, it means to say that in our case, if there's a hurricane in Louisiana, the people of Vermont are there for them. If there's a tornado in the Midwest, we are there for them. If there's flooding in the East Coast, the people in California are there for us.

  Bernie Sanders

  Mean, California, People

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself.

  Cordell Hull

  War, Air, Shadow

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• In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Society, Owing, Opinion

  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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• And no wonder; for the new technique of "subliminal projection," as it was called, was intimately associated with mass entertainment, and in the life of civilized human beings massed entertainment now plays a part comparable to that played in the Middle Ages be religion.

  Aldous Huxley

  Play, Age, Technique

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• Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Sight, Forests

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Natural History Essays”, p.39, Gibbs Smith

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• We can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global community where the basic needs of all the Earth's people are satisfied, and a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. This is entirely doable.

  Lester R. Brown

  Inspiring, Thinking, Support Systems

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• For the sake of democracy, vigorous, civilized debate must replace the law of silence that political correctness has imposed.

  Anthony Daniels

  Law, Silence, Political

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• I have precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of civilized man, and if aware of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathise with the bears.

  John Muir

  Men, Would Be, Littles

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• We talk about civilization as though it's a static state. There are no civilized people yet, it's a process that's constantly going on... As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization.

  Jacque Fresco

  War, Civilization, Long

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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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