Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism

Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans, how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted the ravages…

— Edward Gibbon

“There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is…

— Walter Benjamin

There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

— Walter Benjamin

“There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.”

— Walter Benjamin

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

— Walter Benjamin

In the convulsions of the commodity economy, we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.

— Walter Benjamin

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

That country [Carthage] was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from whence it had been raised by the Phoenician colonies and Roman laws;…

— Edward Gibbon