Civilized Nations Quotes - Page 2

• How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilized nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy!

  Charles Dickens

  Religious, Struggle, Blessed

  Charles Dickens (2016). “The Pickwick Papers: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.310, Pan Macmillan

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• The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Father, Rome

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.170, Simon and Schuster

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• And in spite of everything, Ireland remains the brain of the Kingdom. The English, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish the over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget--the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature.

  James Joyce

  Perfect, Water, Humanity

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• I was standing next to a famed geo-politician when the first news of the Argentine attack [on the Faulkland Islands] was received, and heard him muse incredulously: "An old-fashioned naval battle. A war between two civilized nations, perhaps with even a declaration of war, and later a peace conference. Wow." No hostages, no nukes, no ideologies, no religious fanaticism; just a fair-and-square war over national interests - hard to believe, in this day and age.

  William Safire

  Religious, Peace, War

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• Torture, including practices like waterboarding, violates the legal and moral standards of all civilized nations.

  Jerrold Nadler

  Practice, Moral, Standards

  "No More Clever Wordplay on Torture" by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 15, 2007.

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• So much barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their inconvenience and that of their neighbors, a peculiar currency of their own.

  John Stuart Mill

  Country, Independent, Peculiar

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “Principles of Political Economy: Mill's Works”, p.251, VM eBooks

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• Whatever happens in the country, whatever warfare harasses our land, we will never relinquish our hold on Western learning. As long as this school of ours stands, Japan remains a civilized nation of the world.

  Fukuzawa Yukichi

  Country, School, Land

  Yukichi Fukuzawa, Eiichi Kiyooka (1966). “The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa”, p.211, Columbia University Press

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• Of all the nations in the Western world, the United States, with the most money and the most time, has the fewest readers of books per capita. This is an incalculable loss. This, too, is one of the few civilized nations in the world which is unable to support a single magazine devoted solely to books.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Book, Reading, Loss

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• Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.

  Elie Wiesel

  Children, People, Murder

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.180, Schocken

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• Perhaps my dynamite plants will put an end to war sooner than your [pacifist] congresses. On the day two army corps can annihilate each other in one second all civilized nations will recoil from war in horror.

  Alfred Nobel

  Military, War, Army

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• A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Best Friend, Good Friend, Enemy

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