As civilisation advances, so does indifference.

The more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our…

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

“Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don't expect, I feel civilisation has become a little safer.”

— Matt Haig

Advice for a human 86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does…

— Matt Haig

We are producing urban places which are disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilisation

— Moshe Safdie

I love fashion, beauty, glamour. It's the mark of civilisation,

— David LaChapelle

British culture is very cynical sometimes of overt displays of sentimentality, and I think that becomes almost a suspicion of emotion, or a suspicion…

— Matt Haig

Civilisation is never so charming as when it is an island in the middle of simplicity, or of a civilisation of an alien kind.

— William Hurrell Mallock

But the ear, let us not forget, starts operating on the forty-fifth day of the pregnancy of a woman. Seven and a half months…

— Daniel Barenboim

“the march of civilisation has given the modern girl a vocabulary and an ability to use it which her grandmother never had”

— P. G. Wodehouse

It crosses my mind that our generation may leave problems that are simply too hard for human society in the generations that follow. The…

— Ross Garnaut

The idea that war should be conducted within a moral framework may seem like a quaint medieval practice, but as speech separates humans from…

— Anonymous

The slow rhythm of the body, the insistent rhythm of the wit, were they becoming irreconcilable in modern civilisation? The sedentary life, frustration and…

— Henry Williamson

“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”

— Adam Smith

In some ways, I lament the introduction of civilisation on such a huge scale, because it has given us a lot of room to…

— Roy Harper

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for…

— Benjamin Disraeli