“ You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you find absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundatio… Octave Mirbeau
“ Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort. Jose Ortega y Gasset
“ People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn't got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the… Idries Shah
“ The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself.", September 14, 1958) Bernard Malamud
“ You didn't find any trace of her? asked d'Arnot. // Tarzan shook his head. None. In the jungle, I could have found her; but here –-here, in civilization, a man cannot even find himself. Edgar Rice Burroughs
“ The cities make ferocious men because they may corrupt man. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they development fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side. Victor Hugo
“ 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… Daniel Quinn
“ There is always a city. There is always a civilization. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilization, but to become that city, that civili… Jeanette Winterson
“ To be a man is to feel that one's own stone contributes to building the edifice of the world. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“ Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“ I can't tell you why I was in love with her. People didn't require that much as they do now. Folks were expected to be civilized to one another, honest, and - and clear. You relied on people being wha… Toni Morrison
“ The more civilization progresses, the hollower it becomes and the easier to destroy it. Empress Eugenie of France
“ It seems to me that you can almost define civilization by saying it's people who are not willing to hurt other people because the other people are different. Gene Wolfe
