The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Alfred North Whitehead2 quotes
I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1933Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1911Albert Einstein1 quote
I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two thirds of the people of the earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored. — Albert Einstein · 1945Alexis de Tocqueville1 quote
Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Ayn Rand1 quote
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. — Ayn Rand · 1943Calvin Coolidge1 quote
Civilization and profits go hand in hand. — Calvin Coolidge · 1920Carl Jung1 quote
Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. — Carl Jung · 1933Charles Baudelaire1 quote
Theory of the true civilization.
It is not to be found in gas or steam or table turning, It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin. — Charles Baudelaire · 1867Doc Josiah Boone1 quote
Well, they're saved from the blessings of civilization. — Doc Josiah Boone · 1939Douglas Adams1 quote
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons. — Douglas Adams · 1978Harriet Beecher Stowe1 quote
All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order. — Harriet Beecher Stowe · 1868Havelock Ellis1 quote
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. — Havelock Ellis · 1922Henry David Thoreau1 quote
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. — Henry David Thoreau · 1851John Maynard Keynes1 quote
Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand. — John Maynard Keynes · 1919Jose Ortega y Gasset1 quote
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort. — Jose Ortega y Gasset · 1930Pearl S. Buck1 quote
The test of civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members. — Pearl S. Buck · 1954Sigmund Freud1 quote
We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts. — Sigmund Freud · 1917Thomas Carlyle1 quote
The three great elements of modern civilisation, Gunpowder, Printing and the Protestant Religion. — Thomas Carlyle · 1827Thomas Hobbes1 quote
No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651Toni Morrison1 quote
There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. — Toni Morrison · 2015W.G. Sebald1 quote
From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fires still spread. — W.G. Sebald · 1995