What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. – Henry Havelock Ellis
A living civilization creates; a dying, builds museums. – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
Society is a made-up formula of what we are supposed to be, kept alive by those who believe in it…. I laugh in the ugly face of society, with all its fabricated dimensions. – Author Unknown
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. – B.F. Skinner
When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. – Daniel Webster, Remarks on Agriculture
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. – H.G. Wells, The Outline of History
I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It’s so… heroic. – George Carlin
The reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Uses of Great Men” (lecture)
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries. – Mark Twain, quoted in More Maxims of Mark compiled by Merle Johnson, 1927
Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers. – Abraham Joshua Heschel
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. – Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and report, “There’s a naked person outside!” – Mike Nichols
It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages. – Alfred North Whitehead
Civilization is what makes you sick. – Paul Gauguin
The dying process begins the minute we are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties. – Carol Matthau
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. – Arnold Toynbee
We are so clothed in rationalization and dissemblance that we can recognize but dimly the deep primal impulses that motivate us. – James Ramsey Ullman
Good manners: The noise you don’t make when you’re eating soup. – Bennett Cerf
Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity. – Thor Heyerdahl, Fatu-Hiva
