Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.
The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering - that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.
Imagine how wicked society would be if the fear of God and the fear of civil law were both completely removed.
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.
Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days it'd die of remorse on the third.
The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.
A German immersed in any civilization different from his own loses a weight equivalent in volume to the amount of intelligence he displaces.
Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.
A knowledge of the forces that rule society, of the causes that have produced its upheavals, and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization.
That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.
Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.
Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live.
The rich become richer and the poor become poorer is a cry heard throughout the whole civilized world.
The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.
Virtually all of Africa's civil wars were started by politically marginalized or excluded groups.
I support same-sex civil unions and I believe no should be denied their rights
Where two or more are gathered in the name of Man; that is civilization; that is Order; and that is the beginnings of brutality and suffering.
As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.
To the present writer a careful study of the facts now available seems to leave no doubt that civilization was born at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean.
The snake kills by squeezing very slowly. This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be.
When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.
