Civilization Quote by Jonas Mekas

Civilizations proceed from the heart rather than from the head.

— Mark Twain

Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization.

— Elizabeth Janeway

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs-in spite of things silently gone out of mind,…

— William Wordsworth

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

— Muhammad Iqbal

In the end, what brings civilizations down is when the elites lose confidence in the rightness of their cause.

— Charles Krauthammer

Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.

— Alfred North Whitehead

All the civilizations we know have been created and directed by small intellectual aristocracies, never by people in the mass. The power of crowds…

— Gustave Le Bon

Civilizations are not remembered by their business people, their bankers or lawyers. They're remembered by the arts.

— Eli Broad

In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It's their nature. They can't help it.

— Carl Sagan

But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their…

— Robert Graves