Civilization Quotes

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.

Georges Bernanos
The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

Henry Ward Beecher

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

Sigmund Freud
- Person
- Angry
- First Time
Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!

Abdu'l-Bahá
- World
- Love
- For Her
The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

Susanne Langer
- Culture
- Cities
- Seeds
With apologies to the green movement, "sustainability" is a myth. History and archaeology show that societies are always moving to the edge of crisis, "falling forward" through growth, but then responding often successfully to the problems created. What we can hope for is that with a somewhat more controlled level of growth, and with longer-term preparations for change, we can keep responding to the inevitable smaller crises, as they arise, and continue to postpone until later and later the, perhaps ultimately inevitable, end of our civilization.

Arthur Demarest
In the first half of the 20th Century, we lived through human disasters on a scale unimaginable. The Holocaust was once suggested would be the end of not only civilization, but art, too.

Ian Mcewan
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

Sigmund Freud