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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• Since art is dead in the actual life of civilized nations, it has been relegated to these grotesque morgues, museums.

  Walter Gropius

  Art, Museums, Civilized Nations

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• Inflationism is a dreadful cancer that is gnawing at the backbone of the civilized order.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Cancer, Order, Backbone

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• Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.

  Walter Bagehot

  Society, Age, Human Nature

  Walter Bagehot (1873). “Physics and Politics: Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "natural Selection" and "inheritance" to Political Society”, p.185

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• With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Self, Community, Waste

  The Theory of the Leisure Class ch. 5 (1899)

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• The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

  Anton Chekhov

  Men, Civilization, Privacy

  Anton Chekhov (2010). “Five Plays”, p.5, Stanford University Press

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• The social problem of the twentieth century is whether civilized nations can restore themselves to sanity after their nineteenth-century aberrations of individualism and capitalism.

  Albion Woodbury Small

  Civilized Nations, Aberration, Problem

  1914 'A Vision of Social Efficiency', in the American Journal of Sociology, Jan.

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• The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. . . . Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty.

  Carl Sagan

  Honesty, Ideas, Democracy

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• You do not need to be an expert, or even particularly interested in wine, in order to enjoy drinking it. But tasting is not the same as drinking. Drinking pleases, mellows, loosens the tongue and inhibitions; drinking wine with food is healthy and natural; drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life's most civilized pleasures.

  Michael Broadbent

  Drinking, Wine, Order

  Michael Broadbent (1984). “The Complete Guide to Wine Tasting and Wine Cellars”, Simon & Schuster

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• We need some contact with the things we sprang from. We need nature at least as a part of the context of our lives. Without cities we cannot be civilized. Without nature, without wilderness even, we are compelled to renounce an important part of our heritage.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Cities, Important, Needs

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• The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities of what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what's in or what's out. This is not an easy job.

  Albert Hadley

  Motivational, Meaningful, Fashion

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• The act of willingly subtracting from one's own limited store of the good and the agreeable for the sake of adding to that of others reflects the understanding that individual happiness needs a base broader than the mere satisfaction of selfish passions. From there, it is not such a large step to the realization that respecting the susceptibilities and rights of others is as important as defending one's own susceptibilities and rights if civilized society is to be safeguarded.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Selfish, Passion, Individual Happiness

  Aung San Suu Kyi, University of Oxford. Refugee Studies Programme (1993). “Towards a true refuge”

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• There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.

  P. D. James

  Country, Two, Decision

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.104, Faber & Faber

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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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• With civilized men..., it is, I think, chiefly love of excitement which makes the populace applaud when war breaks out; the emotion is exactly the same as at a football match, although the results are sometimes somewhat more serious.

  Bertrand Russell

  Football, War, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.451, Routledge

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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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