To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
—Will Rogers
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
This increasingly intelligent, fast-moving civilization needs to be applying some of its intelligence to things that change slowly.… If we are constantly tending to the immediate, day-to-day problems, we'll lose that sense of the long term, and then we could be really sorry.
—Stewart Brand
A civilization which tends to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a fortunate few, and to make of others mere human machines, must inevitably evolve anarchy and bring destruction.
—Henry George
Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
—Abraham Flexner
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
—Albert Einstein
Making weapons is what we know how to do best, the supreme achievement of late-twentieth-century American civilization. To this blessed work we assign our finest intellect and the largest share of our treasure, and in the magnificence of an aircraft carrier or a cruise missile we find our moral and aesthetic equivalent of the Sistine ceiling and Chartres Cathedral.
—Lewis Lapham
Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.
—Lincoln Steffens
I'm optimistic about the future, but not about the future of this civilization. I'm optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one.
—James Baldwin
I think God's going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.
—Steven Wright
Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.
—Aristotle
Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future.
—Bourke Cockran
We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt