The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. Albert Camus
Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria:
1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable.
2) They have compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye.
3) They respect other people’s property, and therefore pay their debts.
4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They don’t tell lies even in the most trivial matters.
5) They don’t run themselves down in order to provoke the sympathy of others.
6) They are not vain.
7) If they do possess talent, they value it.
8) They work at developing their aesthetic sensibility. Anton Chekhov, letter to Nikolay Chekhov March 1886
There’s no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities. Roger Zelazny, The Great Book of Amber
I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization. Roger Ebert
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
You’re captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live ... You are captives – and you have made a captive of the world itself. That’s what’s at stake, isn’t it? – your captivity and the captivity of the world. Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind & Spirit
Civilization is a race between disaster and education. H G Wells
Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams – day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing – are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. L Frank Baum, The Lost Princess of Oz
The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations – and absolutely nothing more. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things, a civilisation torn and unable sensibly to adjudicate between the worthwhile ends to which money might be put and the often morally trivial and destructive mechanisms of its generation. Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war. Charles Babbage The Exposition of 1851 xii-xiii
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed ... History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren’t realized ... So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy. Henry Kissinger, cited The Watchtower 2004