The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

—Robert Ingersoll

Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen

—Robert Ingersoll

My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.

—Robert Ingersoll

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

—Robert Ingersoll

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Civilization is built on a number of ultimate principles… respect for human life, the punishment of crimes against property and persons, the equality of all good citizens before the law… or, in a word justice.

—Oscar Wilde

Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size the everyone does not know everyone else.

—Max Nordau

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.

—Julian Jaynes