I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man.

The immense cities lie basking on the beaches of the continent like whales that have taken to the land.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.

I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.

Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.

History is a vision of God's creation on the move.

History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don't use the stuff well, it might as well be dead.

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.

A life which does not go into action is a failure.

Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm.

Civilization is a movement and not a condition a voyage and not a harbor.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the storm center.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

It is just because civilization is ever evolving, changing, and becoming more complicated, that experts find it so difficult to define it in explicit terms.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood.

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

Through the wholesale destruction of the representatives of a class that from the beginning of history had been the directing and creative force in civilization, a process began which was almost mechanical.

Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.

Yet, history has shown that if material force can defeat some ideologies it can no longer obliterate a civilization without destabilizing the whole planet.

To deal with the true causes of war one must begin by recognizing as of prime relevancy to the solution of the problem the familiar fact that civilization is a partial, incomplete, and, to a great extent, superficial modification of barbarism.

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.