Civilization is diaphanous: a dazzling display, beautiful…

we came to realize that a civilization which rode roughshod over the way of life of other peoples was incorporating evil in its own…

— Margaret Mead

“Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have…

— Iain Pears

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many…

— James Joyce

We are somehow the children of the planet, we are somehow its finest hour; we bind time, we bind the past, we anticipate the…

— Terence McKenna

“The mission is, not to replace old world mindlessness with new world mindlessness, but to put an end to all forms of brainless authoritarianism.”

— Abhijit Naskar

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing…

— Carl von Clausewitz

Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a…

— Carl Jung

Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been…

— Ernest Hemingway

We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents cover 109,000…

— Julian Assange

“The voice in the head that never stops speaking becomes a civilization that is obsessed with form and therefore knows nothing of the most…

— Eckhart Tolle

Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it.

— Nicolas Gomez Davila

Sentiment is the mightiest force in civilization; not sentimentality, but sentiment. Women will bring this into politics. Home, sweet home, is as powerful on…

— Judith Ellen Foster

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and…

— Octavio Paz