In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent…

In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.

— James Payn

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to…

— Alfred North Whitehead

The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and…

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

All civilised countries should unite in the fight against international terrorism.

— Vladimir Putin

You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world,…

— Bernard Pivot

Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.

— Herbert Spencer

I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels…

— Henry Walter Bates

Bombing is not especially inhumane. War itself is inhumane and the bombing plane, which is used to paralyse industry and transport, is a relatively…

— George Orwell

This generation may either be the last to exist in any semblance of a civilised world or that it will be the first to…

— Richard St. Barbe Baker

The civilised cultures are the most cruel. It's the same with education - often it breeds sadistic forms of cruelty.

— Nellie McKay

This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.

— Samuel Smiles

When we get civilised, I believe children will go by number until they get old enough to choose their own names.

— Myrtle Reed

On this waterlogged landscape…are scattered palaces and hovels…It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation…

— Alexis de Tocqueville

Civilised my syphilised yarbles.

— Anthony Burgess

Even today to be civilised is held to be synonymous with being westernised. Advanced countries devote large resources to formulating and spreading ideas and…

— Indira Gandhi