Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)

Civilization degrades the many to exalt¹ the few.

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799 - 1888), Table Talk (1877)

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 (384 BC - 322 BC), Politics, book 1, chapter 2

Underlying² 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

The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there.

Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883)

The history of man is a graveyard³ of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge.

Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice⁴, any hatred⁵, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Letter to Dr. William Allan Nielson, January 9, 1940

Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe⁶.

H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)

The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.

Havelock Ellis (1859 - 1939), The Dance of Life

It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.

Henry Allen

But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness-each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked-each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext⁷ for still deeper hatred and animosity.

Herbert Butterfield, Christianity, Diplomacy⁸ and War

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

Jane Addams (1860 - 1935), Speech, Honolulu (1933)

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

Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness"

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.

Max Nordau (1849 - 1923)

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence⁹ without civilization in between.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

Robert Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)

Speech is civilization itself... It is silence which isolates¹⁰.

Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos¹¹.

Will Durant (1885 - 1981)

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

Will Rogers (1879 - 1935), New York Times, Dec. 23, 1929

One of the indictments¹² of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.

William Feather (1908 - 1976)