Violence and irrationality were so long and thoroughly cultivated among the Irish, and so perfectly ingrained into their nature, that modern civilization has as yet been unable to extract the virus.
Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.
The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.
What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.
If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.
Air power and military are meant to fight the enemy and not your own citizens... How do you differentiate a Maoist?... It will create a civil war-like situation.
I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women's roles are growing in power all of the time.
A Christian people who have for two hundred years kept a race in bondage, deprived of the advantages of civilization and religion, owe them a debt of gratitude which it would seem ungenerous to withhold.
Civil disobedience is not accepted by religion and the state does not accept it and there are many verses in the Holy Book that talk of following the ruler.
I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion, but it is a civilization bent on destroying ours.
I believe that science is the engine of prosperity, that if you look around at the wealth of civilization today, it's the wealth that comes from science.
A generous basic state pension is the least a civilized society should offer those who have worked hard and saved through their whole lives.
If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology.
If the lives of men can be measured in terms of years, ideologies in decades, and nations in centuries, then the unit measuring civilizations, born of the interaction among peoples, would be the millennium.
Every principle of liberty enunciated in any civilized country on earth, with very few exceptions, was intended entirely for men, and when women tried to force the putting into practice of these principles, for women, then they discovered they had co...
The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.
In many ways, the crumbling of the institution of marriage is the real 'war on women.' Marriage is the civilizing influence for men and for families.
Sheik Ilderim: One God, that I can understand; but one wife? That is not civilized. [nudges Judah] Sheik Ilderim: It is not generous!
It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
Politics is the most important of the civil activities and has its own field of action, which is not that of religion.
It is what you do from now on that will either move our civilization forward a few tiny steps, or else... begin to march us steadily backward.
