Civilized Quotes - Page 24

• Earnsha was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point - one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed - they contrived in the end to reach it.

  Emily Bronte

  Mind, Wish, Philosopher

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.592, Penguin

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• Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.

  J. Maarten Troost

  Virtue, Civilized Society, Regard

  J. Maarten Troost (2004). “The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific”, Broadway

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• Obama, who is becoming more and more preacher-like, wants to be the Punisher-in-Chi ef of the Western World, the Avenger-in-Chie f. There is something oddly Roman about him. ... The lesser races must be civilized and they must be punished... Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.

  Robert Fisk

  Race, World, Want

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• We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Growing Up, Children, Fall

  FaceBook post by Madeleine L'Engle from Nov 03, 2016

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• Today’s milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, the underground world of death that acts upon us, do not have the civilized splendor of the Greek city state. The modern political domain is massively, in totalitarian fashion, social, leveling, exhausting. Hence madness is a space of antisocial, apolitical, and paradoxically free individuation

  Julia Kristeva

  Fashion, War, Cities

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• Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

  Walter E. Williams

  School, Welfare Programs, People

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• Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Men, Progress

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.416, Knopf

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• Laughter... the most civilized music in the world.

  Peter Ustinov

  Laughter, Philosophical, World

  Dear Me (1977) ch. 3

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• There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Character, Secret

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• The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.' - Traveller

  Steven Erikson

  War, Civilization, Effort

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• I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Sorry, Pain, Sunset

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• Civilization is only possible for deeply unpleasant animals. It is only an ape that can be truly civilized.

  Mark Rowlands

  Animal, Civilization, Apes

  Mark Rowlands (2010). “The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness”, p.65, Pegasus Books

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• The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.

  Iain Pears

  Philosophy, Civilization, Purpose

  Iain Pears (2003). “Dream of Scipio”, p.237, Penguin

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• Design, vitalized and simplified, will make the comforts of civilized life available to an ever-increasing number of Americans.

  Raymond Loewy

  Numbers, Design, Comfort

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• Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.

  Philip K. Dick

  Men, Body, Obscure

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “The Man in the High Castle”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.

  John Boyne

  Brother, Speak, Moments

  John Boyne (2012). “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, p.158, Random House

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• [Educated blacks] Society refuses to consider them genuine Negroes. The Negro is a savage, whereas the student is civilized. "You're us," and if anyone thinks you are a Negro he is mistaken, because you merely look like one.

  Frantz Fanon

  Thinking, Savages, Looks

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• The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.

  Paul Theroux

  Compassion, Behavior, Civilized Behavior

  Paul Theroux (2004). “Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Wine, Vineyards, World

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2197, Simon and Schuster

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• Coffee - the favorite drink of the civilized world.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Coffee, World, Drink

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• What is still more to our shame as civilized Christians, we debauch their morals already too prone to vice, and we introduce among them wants and perhaps disease which they never before knew and which serve only to disturb that happy tranquility which they and their forefathers enjoyed. If anyone denies the truth of this assertion, let him tell me what the natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans.

  James Cook

  Christian, America, History

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• Tea? Good God, no. It's mud. How the British ever built an empire drinking the filthy stuff is beyond me. And if we carry on drinking it, I've no doubt that the empire won't last much longer. No, a civilized person drinks coffee.

  Charlie Higson

  Drinking, Coffee, Doubt

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• No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it.

  Isak Dinesen

  Animal, People, Silence

  Isak Dinesen (1938). “Out of Africa”

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• Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure.

  Mark Skousen

  Taxation, Levels, Pay

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• We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.

  Pat Barker

  Jobs, Mean, Thinking

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