Civilized Quotes - Page 6

• Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

  Sigmund Freud

  Peace, War, Men

  Sigmund Freud (1930). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, p.40, Courier Dover Publications

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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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• Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Art, Men, Law

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

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• Has there ever been an age so rife with neurotic sensibility, with that state of near shudders, or near hysteria, or near nausea, much of it induced by trifles, which used to belong to people who were at once ill-adjusted and over-civilized?

  Louis Kronenberger

  Hysteria, People, Age

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• to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.

  Agnes Repplier

  Kindness, Giving, Quality

  Agnes Repplier (1912). “Americans and Others”

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• The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Editors, Common Sense, Giving

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• The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault, but it remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised.

  Michael Joseph Oakeshott

  Law, Bread, States

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• I'm sophisticated, charming, suave, and debonair, Professor. But I have never claimed to be civilized.

  Derek Landy

  Suave, Sophisticated, Charming

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• Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of inspiration. It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge - that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Christian, Children, Inspiration

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.2145, Library of Alexandria

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• We are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour.

  Tennessee Williams

  Heart, Mean, People

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• I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.

  Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

  Ideas, Historical, World

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• The main trouble with this civilized world isn't that we adventure too much, but that we fail to adventure enough.

  Cornelia Parker

  Adventure, World, Too Much

  Cornelia Stratton Parker (1934). “Wanderer's Circle”

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• It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully human.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Men, Desire, Becoming

  Theodore Dalrymple (2005). “Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses”, Ivan R Dee

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• Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries — not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.

  Albert Einstein

  Country, Inspiration, People

  "Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb".

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• The simultaneous reactions elicited all over the world by the reading of newspaper dispatches about the same events create, as it were, a common mental pulse beat for the whole of civilized mankind.

  Christian Lous Lange

  Reading, World, Pulse

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• I don't actually believe in a clash of civilizations. I believe in a clash of the civilized and the noncivilized.

  Madeleine Albright

  Believe, Civilization, Clash

  "Online Extra: Madeleine Albright on Democracy and Force". Q&A, www.bloomberg.com. December 23, 2002.

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• If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Art, Men, Together

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.134

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• There is something on earth greater than arbitrary or despotic power. The lightning has its power, and the whirlwind has its power, and the earthquake has its power; but there is something among men more capable of shaking despotic thrones than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake, and that is, the excited and aroused indignation of the whole civilized world.

  Daniel Webster

  Men, Earthquakes, Lightning

  DANIEL WEBSTER (1853). “THE WORKS OF DANIEL WEBSTER; VOLUME II”, p.514

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• I'm a cosmopolitan sophisticate of culture and intelligence. The culmination of technology and civilized experience.

  Billy Joel

  Technology, Culture, Culmination

  Song: Running On Ice, Album: The Bridge, 1986

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• I do not oppose the insane asylum - but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Men, Community, Insanity

  "What's the Matter with Chicago?" by Eugene V. Debs in "Chicago Socialist", www.marxists.org. October 25, 1902.

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• Since art is a virtue of the intellect, it demands to communicate with the entire universe of the intellect. Hence it is that the normal climate of art is intelligence and knowledge: its normal soil, the civilized heritage of a consistent and integrated system of beliefs and values; its normal horizon , the infinity of human experience enlighted by the passionate insight of anguish or the intellectual virtues of a contemplative mind.

  Jacques Maritain

  Art, Intellectual, Mind

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• Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of drinks—a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece.

  Tom Standage

  Drinking, Wine, Beer

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• I feel we all have the obligation, myself. I want to live in a more humane, civilized society, and I feel like the only way we're going to achieve that is if we all take it upon ourselves. I just wish we could be a more caring society. I feel like we're social Darwinists who believe that everyone has to make it on their own. But the reality is that we all don't start out on the same footing.

  Natalie Merchant

  Believe, Caring, Reality

  "Natalie Merchant: Of nice and men". Interview with Donna Freydkin, www.cnn.com. May 21, 1999.

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• . . . As a so-called "civilized" people, and as members of a society in search of lasting peace in the world, we cannot remain callous to our responsibility toward nature and insensitive to the inherent rights of the animals.

  Nathaniel Altman

  Nature, Responsibility, Animal

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• It seems to me that we have to draw the line in sibling rivalry whenever rivalry goes out of bounds into destructive behavior of aphysical or verbal kind. The principle needs to be this: Whatever the reasons for your feelings you will have to find civilized solutions.

  Selma Fraiberg

  Sibling, Feelings, Principles

  Selma H. Fraiberg (2015). “The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood”, p.281, Simon and Schuster

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