Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism…

At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial…

— Antoine Rivarol

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization…

— C. S. Lewis

“Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science. ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure…

— Will Durant

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet…

— John Buchan

Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line…

— Edward Bellamy

Christianity has carried civilization along with it, whithersoever it has gone; and, as if to show that the latter does not depend on physical…

— Augustus William Hare

“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

Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.

— Bill Cosby

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

— Sigmund Freud

“Spiritual activity, education, civilization, culture, the idea are all vague, indefinite concepts, under the banner of which it is quite convenient to use words…

— Leo Tolstoy

When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant: a major sports…

— Anonymous

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

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