If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. – Stanley Garn
Civilization: a thin veneer over barbarianism. – John M. Shanahan, The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less)
Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta. – Brian Aldiss
Civilization is the lambs skin in which barbarism masquerades. – Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages. – Hervey Allen
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 civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven. – Cyril Connolly
Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man. – Benjamin Disraeli
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering the prisons. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air? – Mary Baker Eddy
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. – Havelock Ellis
Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this. – Sigmund Freud
The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism. – David Hare
Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum. – Vance Havner
Without winners, there wouldnt even be any civilization. – Woody Hayes
The path of civilization is paved with tin cans. – Elbert Hubbard
A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death. – Robert Maynard Hutchins
One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left. – Henry James
