Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort. Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work. Aldous Huxley
Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour. Arnold Toynbee
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. Samuel Johnson
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. Ayn Rand
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. Will Durant
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. Sigmund Freud
Civilization rests on a set of promises; if the promises are broken too often, the civilization dies, no matter how rich it may be, or how mechanically clever. Hope and faith depend on the promises; if hope and faith go, everything goes. Herbert Agar
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest. Emile Zola
All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on success in war. Kenneth Clark
The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Milton Friedman
Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others. Alexander Herzen
The slum is the measure of civilization. Jacob Riis
We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket. George Carlin
People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilization. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilization; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater. Kenneth Clark
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. George Bancroft
A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed. E M Cioran
A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect. E M Cioran
That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of nature, but to the injustice of man. Henry George
No civilization … would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other. Hannah Arendt
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Barbara Tuchman