Civilized Quotes - Page 4

• The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.

  Mark Skousen

  Liberty, Libertarian, Triumph

  "Civilization Held Together by Persuasion, Not Force". The Religion & Liberty Interview, acton.org. July 20, 2010.

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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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• Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing.

  George Meredith

  Struggle, Men, Reflection

  George Meredith (1922). “The Complete Works of George Meredith”, p.4327, Library of Alexandria

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• Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Stars, Cutting, Roots

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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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• 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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• 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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• It has been the fashion to speak of the conflict between human rights and property rights, and from this it has come to be widely believed that the use of private property is tainted with evil and should not be espoused by rational and civilized men... the only dependable foundation of personal liberty is the personal economic security of private property. The Good Society.

  Walter Lippmann

  Wisdom, Fashion, Men

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• The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  People, Disease, Pessimism

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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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• Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians, by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself. They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons lives from violence of any and every kind by all means within their power.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Mean, People, Community

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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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• Matthey, a Geneva physician very close to Rousseau's influence, formulates the prospect for all men of reason: 'Do not glory in your state, if you are wise and civilized men; an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud; an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot.

  Michel Foucault

  Wise, Men, Intelligent

  Michel Foucault (2001). “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, p.201, Psychology Press

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• We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.

  Herman Melville

  Soul, Body, May

  1849 Redburn, ch.58.

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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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• 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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• With all my heart I believe that the world's present system of sovereign nations can only lead to barbarism, war and inhumanity, and that only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community.

  Albert Einstein

  War, Believe, Heart

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Perhaps the habit which distinguishes civilized people from others is that of discussion, exchange of opinion and ideas, the ability to differ without quarrelling, to say what you have to say civilly and then to listen civilly to another speaker.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Ideas, People, Opinion

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.205, Atlantic Monthly Press

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