Famous Quotes & Sayings

Robert E. Howard

Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence - whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.

Robert E. Howard

Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.

Robert E. Howard

Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.

Robert E. Howard

Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph

Tom Robbins

But the center can be a harmful place for one who has lived so long on the edge.... Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

Tom Robbins

Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.

Tom Robbins

Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

Tom Robbins

Virtually every advancement made by our species since civilization first peeked out of its nest of stone has been initiated by lone individuals, mavericks who more often than not were ignored, mocked, or viciously persecuted by society and its institutions.

Vaclav Havel

We are the first atheistic and global, all-embracing civilization. You cannot tell whether you are sitting at an airport in Hong Kong or in a hotel in Alaska. Everything is instrumentalized, subjected to a short-term purpose. It is quite possible that in such a situation any sense of a deeper meaning gets lost.

Vaclav Havel

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies.

Stephen Hawking

If a superior alien civilization sent us a message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades', would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here – we'll leave the lights on'? Probably not – but this is more or less what is happening with AI,

Sigmund Freud

The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.

Sigmund Freud

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.

Sigmund Freud

The different religions have never overlooked the part played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come forward with a claim...to save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin.

Sigmund Freud

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

Sigmund Freud

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

Sigmund Freud

The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation.

Sigmund Freud

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

Sigmund Freud

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

Shirley Hazzard

Americans' great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon rather than a civilization.

Shereen El Feki

Throughout its history, Islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations, both ancient and modern.

Steven Pinker

For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.

Steven Weber

I know it's sappy, but I bet there's a market for civility and niceness out there that, while probably not as titillating as a junkyard scrap between shirtless adversaries, it'd sure be healthier.

Steven Weinberg

Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion, should be done and may, in fact, in the end, be our greatest contribution to civilization.

Rose Macaulay

what about Christianity? Are we right in the face of so long a record of its poverty in international achievement, to keep invoking it as a standard, almost synonymous with civilization?

Rose Macaulay

the position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind.

Tryon Edwards

No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity.

Reynolds Price

Cities are the least permanent things in our civilization.

Reinhold Niebuhr

One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.

Sydney J. Harris

Western civilization has not yet learned the lesson that the energy we expend in 'getting things done' is less important than the moral strength it takes to decide what is worth doing and what is right to do.

Scott Westerfeld

Maybe they didn't want you to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There's always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away all that's left is some story in a history class.

Wallace Stevens

Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints.

William Henry Harrison

Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization?