{ "type": "topic", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization", "heading": "Quotes about civilization", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization.md", "quotes_count": 130, "authors_count": 100, "parent": { "name": "society", "slug": "society", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society", "heading": "Quotes about society" }, "children": [], "quotes": [ { "id": "f7b7cc8f-e172-4044-8853-d482c03e82a0", "slug": "thing-about-civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/nemesis-games/thing-about-civilization", "text": "Thing about civilization, it’s what keeps people civil. You get rid of one, you can’t count on the other.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James S. A. Corey", "slug": "james-s-a-corey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey" }, "book": { "title": "Nemesis Games", "slug": "nemesis-games", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/nemesis-games" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 316, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#Nemesis_Games_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:36" }, { "id": "81d434da-cc91-456d-b8a3-f3b866a4cb7b", "slug": "see-thats-what", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/nemesis-games/see-thats-what", "text": "“See, that’s what civilization is,” he said. “Bunch of stories. That’s all.” “So what if it is?” Peaches said. “We’re really good at telling stories.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "James S. A. Corey", "slug": "james-s-a-corey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey" }, "book": { "title": "Nemesis Games", "slug": "nemesis-games", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-s-a-corey/nemesis-games" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 417, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "stories", "slug": "stories", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/stories" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_S._A._Corey#Nemesis_Games_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:36" }, { "id": "9ae8f623-0c28-41d7-910a-f23abe8b8791", "slug": "we-are-responsible", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/helen-czerski/storm-in-a-teacup/we-are-responsible", "text": "We are responsible for our civilization. We vote... choose what to buy and how to live... collectively [as] part of the human journey.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Helen Czerski", "slug": "helen-czerski", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/helen-czerski" }, "book": { "title": "Storm in a Teacup", "slug": "storm-in-a-teacup", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/helen-czerski/storm-in-a-teacup" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "responsibility", "slug": "responsibility", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/responsibility" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helen_Czerski#Storm_in_a_Teacup_(2016)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:51" }, { "id": "e81b6dda-3b34-4afc-baab-f74774880ab7", "slug": "what-a-strange", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides/what-a-strange", "text": "What a strange thing then is this great civilization, that no sooner have men attained it than they seek to flee from it!", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George R. Stewart", "slug": "george-r-stewart", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart" }, "book": { "title": "Earth Abides", "slug": "earth-abides", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 293, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_R._Stewart#Earth_Abides_(1949)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:35" }, { "id": "cde7e338-5b84-44d0-a4f7-ae497703289e", "slug": "perhaps-rationalism-like-so-much", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides/perhaps-rationalism-like-so-much", "text": "Perhaps rationalism—like so much else—had only been one of the luxuries which men could afford under civilization.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George R. Stewart", "slug": "george-r-stewart", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart" }, "book": { "title": "Earth Abides", "slug": "earth-abides", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 284, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "reason", "slug": "reason", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reason" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_R._Stewart#Earth_Abides_(1949)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:35" }, { "id": "90c1f498-1723-49d4-add3-724835323e73", "slug": "man-invented-civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides/man-invented-civilization", "text": "Man invented civilization, and was inordinately proud of it. But in no way did civilization change life more than by sharpening the line between work and play, and at last that division came to be more important than the old one between sleeping and waking. Sleep came to be thought a kind of relaxation, and “sleeping on the job” a heinous sin. The turning out of the light and the ringing of the alarm clock were not so much the symbols of man’s dual life as were the punching of the time clock and the blowing of the whistle. Men marched on picket lines and threw bricks and exploded dynamite to shift an hour from one classification to the other, and other men fought equally hard to prevent them. And always work became more laborious and odious, and play grew more artificial and febrile.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George R. Stewart", "slug": "george-r-stewart", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart" }, "book": { "title": "Earth Abides", "slug": "earth-abides", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 193, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "play", "slug": "play", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/play" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_R._Stewart#Earth_Abides_(1949)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:35" }, { "id": "98b82422-8276-407d-9784-a47b940f2a4d", "slug": "suddenly-he-felt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides/suddenly-he-felt", "text": "Suddenly he felt that all civilization depended not only upon men but also upon these other things which had marched with him like kinsman and friends and companions. If Saint Francis had hailed the sun as brother, might not we also say, “Oh, Brother Wheat! Oh, Sister Barley!” He smiled to himself. Yes, one could go on: “Oh, Grandfather Wheel! Oh, Cousin Compass! Oh, Friend Binomial Theorem!”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George R. Stewart", "slug": "george-r-stewart", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart" }, "book": { "title": "Earth Abides", "slug": "earth-abides", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-r-stewart/earth-abides" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 122, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_R._Stewart#Earth_Abides_(1949)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:34" }, { "id": "60e074d6-6a04-43bd-9742-3b60eca48df7", "slug": "if-ever-a-society", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/graham-hancock/magicians-of-the-gods/if-ever-a-society", "text": "If ever a society could be said to meet all the mythological criteria of the next lost civilization—a society that ticks all the boxes—is it not obvious that it is our own? Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter is all there is—that there is no such thing as spirit, that we are just accidents of chemistry and biology—all these things, and many more, in mythological terms at least, do not look good for us.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Graham Hancock", "slug": "graham-hancock", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/graham-hancock" }, "book": { "title": "Magicians of the Gods", "slug": "magicians-of-the-gods", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/graham-hancock/magicians-of-the-gods" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "ecology", "slug": "ecology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "cruelty", "slug": "cruelty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/cruelty" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock#Magicians_of_the_Gods:_The_Forgotten_Wisdom_of_Earth's_Lost_Civilization_(2015)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:27" }, { "id": "3634de09-b03a-4243-aca8-9a037f73cfa3", "slug": "denouncing-civilization-takes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-toltz/a-fraction-of-the-whole/denouncing-civilization-takes", "text": "Denouncing civilization takes its toll when you continue to exist within it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steve Toltz", "slug": "steve-toltz", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-toltz" }, "book": { "title": "A Fraction Of The Whole", "slug": "a-fraction-of-the-whole", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steve-toltz/a-fraction-of-the-whole" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "hypocrisy", "slug": "hypocrisy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hypocrisy" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Toltz#Three", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:11" }, { "id": "24fad299-06db-4c96-8691-4938d0531b57", "slug": "as-you-know", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp/the-purple-pterodactyls/as-you-know", "text": "As you know, Monsieur Newbury, the civilization is but a thin crust over our savage interiors, no matter if our skins be white or black. We must try to keep this shell of egg intact.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "L. Sprague deCamp", "slug": "l-sprague-decamp", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp" }, "book": { "title": "The Purple Pterodactyls", "slug": "the-purple-pterodactyls", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/l-sprague-decamp/the-purple-pterodactyls" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 130, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/L._Sprague_de_Camp#The_Purple_Pterodactyls_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:04:10" }, { "id": "ba9c2995-6aec-40d3-830b-944744da305e", "slug": "and-as-a-result", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn/the-wooden-star/and-as-a-result", "text": "“And, as a result of this examination,” the forked pink beard smiled down gently from above, “the specialists discovered that what you call the human race was nonviable. That is, while the individuals composing it had strongly developed instincts of self-preservation, the species as a whole was suicidal.” “Suicidal!” I found myself breathing up with rest. “Quite. This is a matter on which there can be little argument from the more honest among you. High civilization is a product of communal living and Man, in groups, has always tended to wipe himself out. In fact, a large factor in the development of what little civilization you do experience has been the rewards contingent upon the development of mass-destruction weapons.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Tenn", "slug": "william-tenn", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn" }, "book": { "title": "The Wooden Star", "slug": "the-wooden-star", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-tenn/the-wooden-star" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 144, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Tenn#The_Wooden_Star_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:58" }, { "id": "a0c61b38-1692-47dc-bd38-c6c3d417c0fb", "slug": "science-devises-ever", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas/science-devises-ever", "text": "[...] science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction. [...] Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man , are the same faculties that'll snuff out Homo sapiens before this century is out!", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Mitchell", "slug": "david-mitchell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell" }, "book": { "title": "Cloud Atlas", "slug": "cloud-atlas", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 444, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_(novel)#Letters_from_Zedelghem_(Part_2)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:57" }, { "id": "a3bc88cc-1832-4590-9129-9ef2f83709cc", "slug": "listn-savages-an-civlizeds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas/listn-savages-an-civlizeds", "text": "List'n, savages an Civ'lizeds ain't divvied by tribes or b'liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev'ry human is both, yay. Old Uns'd got the Smart o' gods but the savagery o' jackals, an' that's what tripped the Fall. Some Savages what I knowed got a beautsome Civ'lized heart beatin' in their ribs. Maybe some Kona. Not 'nuff to sayso their hole tribe, but who knows one day? One day. \"One day\" was only a flea o' hope for us. Yay, I mem'ry Meronym sayin', but fleas ain't easy to rid.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Mitchell", "slug": "david-mitchell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell" }, "book": { "title": "Cloud Atlas", "slug": "cloud-atlas", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-mitchell/cloud-atlas" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 303, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "hope", "slug": "hope", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hope" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_(novel)#Sloosha's_Crossin'_an'_Evrythin'_After", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:56" }, { "id": "a5cfaca5-125a-43bb-826b-c37665c04e31", "slug": "one-becomes-a-philosopher", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/b-traven/the-bridge-in-the-jungle/one-becomes-a-philosopher", "text": "One becomes a philosopher [...] by living among people who are not of his own race and who speak a different language [...] A trip to a Central American jungle to watch how Indians behave near a bridge won't make you see either the jungle or the bridge or the Indians if you believe that the civilization you were born into is the only one that counts. Go and look around with the idea that everything you learned in school and college is wrong.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "B. Traven", "slug": "b-traven", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/b-traven" }, "book": { "title": "The Bridge in the Jungle", "slug": "the-bridge-in-the-jungle", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/b-traven/the-bridge-in-the-jungle" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "travel", "slug": "travel", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/travel" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "prejudice", "slug": "prejudice", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/prejudice" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/B._Traven#The_Bridge_in_the_Jungle_(1929)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:16" }, { "id": "9b1244ec-29da-48a8-83ac-afa8915f525b", "slug": "i-wonder-if-a-sillier", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham/the-midwich-cuckoos/i-wonder-if-a-sillier", "text": "'I wonder if a sillier and more ignorant catachresis than \"Mother Nature\" was ever perpetrated? It is because Nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilisation. One thinks of wild animals as savage, but the fiercest of them begins to look almost domesticated when one considers the viciousness required of a survivor in the sea; as for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror. There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by \"Mother Nature\". Each species must strive to survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul — unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct.'", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Wyndham", "slug": "john-wyndham", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham" }, "book": { "title": "The Midwich Cuckoos", "slug": "the-midwich-cuckoos", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham/the-midwich-cuckoos" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 112, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "cruelty", "slug": "cruelty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/cruelty" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Wyndham#The_Midwich_Cuckoos_(1957)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:04" }, { "id": "a4febe8d-ccfe-4292-af35-c42e0a4eeac5", "slug": "not-like-those", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/buchi-emecheta/second-class-citizen/not-like-those", "text": "Not like those of their children who later got caught up in the entangled web of industrialisation. Adah’s Ma had no experience of having to keep up mortgage payments: she never knew what it was to have a family car, or worry about its innards; she had no worries about pollution, the population explosion or race. Was it surprising, therefore, that she was happy, being unaware of the so-called joys of civilisation and all its pitfalls?”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Buchi Emecheta", "slug": "buchi-emecheta", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/buchi-emecheta" }, "book": { "title": "Second-Class Citizen", "slug": "second-class-citizen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/buchi-emecheta/second-class-citizen" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "happiness", "slug": "happiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Class_Citizen#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:53" }, { "id": "cd9b82c8-78ae-4782-adff-cf8fbfaf15fc", "slug": "it-all-began", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/it-all-began", "text": "It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fire—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Walter Tevis", "slug": "walter-tevis", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis" }, "book": { "title": "Mockingbird", "slug": "mockingbird", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 176, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "irony", "slug": "irony", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/irony" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "drugs", "slug": "drugs", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/drugs" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis#Mockingbird_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:26" }, { "id": "05e1f975-ad3e-419f-9a18-1f9bd0503d47", "slug": "human-history-like", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward/human-history-like", "text": "Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. the idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Edward Bellamy", "slug": "edward-bellamy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy" }, "book": { "title": "Looking Backward", "slug": "looking-backward", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Looking_Backward:_2000%E2%80%931887#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:24" }, { "id": "87a9b212-edbe-45af-807b-472ca9483161", "slug": "perhaps-oshima-says", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore/perhaps-oshima-says", "text": "“Perhaps,” Oshima says, as if fed up. “Perhaps most people in the world aren’t trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real bind. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer not being free.” “Including you?” “Yeah. I prefer being unfree, too. Up to a point. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it’s true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Haruki Murakami", "slug": "haruki-murakami", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami" }, "book": { "title": "Kafka on the Shore", "slug": "kafka-on-the-shore", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kafka_on_the_Shore#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:18" }, { "id": "7a31793b-a25d-4e2f-b319-3e5a23d0080d", "slug": "my-own-tastes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/the-marsh-arabs/my-own-tastes", "text": "My own tastes went, perhaps, too far to the other extreme. I loathed cars, aeroplanes, wireless and television, in fact most of our civilization's manifestations in the past fifty years, and was always happy, in Iraq or elsewhere, to share a smoke-filled hovel with a shepherd, his family and beasts. In such a household, everything was strange and different, their self-reliance put me at ease, and I was fascinated by the feeling of continuity with the past. I envied them a contentment rare in the world today and a mastery of skills, however simple, that I myself could never hope to attain.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Wilfred Thesiger", "slug": "wilfred-thesiger", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger" }, "book": { "title": "The Marsh Arabs", "slug": "the-marsh-arabs", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/the-marsh-arabs" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 50, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "happiness", "slug": "happiness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilfred_Thesiger#The_Marsh_Arabs_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:03" }, { "id": "717fd08b-b7a6-4633-ac63-cbf14cfe6178", "slug": "after-all-many", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands/after-all-many", "text": "After all, many people feel today that it is morally indefensible to hang a man, even if he has raped and killed a child, but I could not forget how easily we ourselves had taken to killing during the war. Some of the most civilized people I had known had been the most proficient.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Wilfred Thesiger", "slug": "wilfred-thesiger", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger" }, "book": { "title": "Arabian Sands", "slug": "arabian-sands", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 94, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "violence", "slug": "violence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/violence" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "capital punishment", "slug": "capital-punishment", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/capital-punishment" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilfred_Thesiger#Arabian_Sands_(1959)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:02" }, { "id": "02b0d382-31d0-4932-980d-501c4a1d4f41", "slug": "yet-i-wondered", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands/yet-i-wondered", "text": "Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Wilfred Thesiger", "slug": "wilfred-thesiger", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger" }, "book": { "title": "Arabian Sands", "slug": "arabian-sands", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilfred-thesiger/arabian-sands" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 68, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "change", "slug": "change", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/change" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "remorse", "slug": "remorse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/remorse" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilfred_Thesiger#Arabian_Sands_(1959)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:02" }, { "id": "f080e2cc-471f-47ff-9968-c7b9d8532f7e", "slug": "theres-a-certain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/algis-budrys/some-will-not-die/theres-a-certain", "text": "There’s a certain step-by-step logic, inherent in human nature and the peculiarities of human psychology, which ensures that Man will always organize into the largest possible group. Civilization is inevitable, if you want a pat phrase.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Algis Budrys", "slug": "algis-budrys", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/algis-budrys" }, "book": { "title": "Some Will Not Die", "slug": "some-will-not-die", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/algis-budrys/some-will-not-die" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 82, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Algis_Budrys#Some_Will_Not_Die_(1961)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:01:23" }, { "id": "1cf0cfc7-2d4e-412a-b150-4586f6926ad4", "slug": "its-hard-for", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/pierce-brown/morning-star/its-hard-for", "text": "\"It's hard for me to speak to you as if you were not a tyrant,\" I say. \"You sit here and think you are more civilized than Luna because you obey your creed of honor, because you show restraint.\" I gesture to the simple house. \"But you're not more civilized,\" I say. You're just more disciplined.\" \"Isn't that civilization? Order? Denying animal impulses for stability?\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Pierce Brown", "slug": "pierce-brown", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/pierce-brown" }, "book": { "title": "Morning Star", "slug": "morning-star", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/pierce-brown/morning-star" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierce_Brown#Morning_Star_(2016)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:59" }, { "id": "fba97774-89f3-4a95-adeb-c2cd69a45878", "slug": "civilisations-beyond-number", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/house-of-suns/civilisations-beyond-number", "text": "Civilisations beyond number had risen from obscurity, considering themselves masters of all creation, before fading back into the footnotes of history.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "House of Suns", "slug": "house-of-suns", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/house-of-suns" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 152, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#House_of_Suns_(2008)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:40" }, { "id": "203c211b-ac0c-475e-be89-5fa5a648c12c", "slug": "the-universe-always", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/beyond-the-aquila-rift/the-universe-always", "text": "The universe always feels old, though. That’s a universal truth, a universal fact of life. It felt old for her, already cobwebbed by history. Hard for us to grasp, I know. Human civilisation, it’s just the last scratch on the last scratch on the last scratch, on the last layer of everything. We’re noise. Dirt. We haven’t begun to leave a trace.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alastair Reynolds", "slug": "alastair-reynolds", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds" }, "book": { "title": "Beyond the Aquila Rift", "slug": "beyond-the-aquila-rift", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/beyond-the-aquila-rift" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 695, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "the universe", "slug": "the-universe", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-universe" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Beyond_the_Aquila_Rift_(2016)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:37" }, { "id": "9e900834-a9d2-467a-bd7e-c53665856aaf", "slug": "the-truth-is-our", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton/cry-the-beloved-country/the-truth-is-our", "text": "The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alan Paton", "slug": "alan-paton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton" }, "book": { "title": "Cry, The Beloved Country", "slug": "cry-the-beloved-country", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton/cry-the-beloved-country" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "hypocrisy", "slug": "hypocrisy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hypocrisy" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "Christianity", "slug": "christianity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/christianity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Paton#Cry,_the_Beloved_Country,_(1948)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:29" }, { "id": "f33ed73b-c0cf-4f10-adf2-e1ddc48450ea", "slug": "what-after-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ann-leckie/ancillary-justice/what-after-all", "text": "What, after all, was the point of civilization if not the well-being of citizens?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ann Leckie", "slug": "ann-leckie", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ann-leckie" }, "book": { "title": "Ancillary Justice", "slug": "ancillary-justice", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ann-leckie/ancillary-justice" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 121, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ann_Leckie#Ancillary_Justice_(2013)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:00:08" }, { "id": "86f59447-91ad-4480-9d2c-b9b93f9c70f7", "slug": "empires-were-like", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tad-williams/to-green-angel-tower/empires-were-like", "text": "Empires were like seawalls, he thought sadly, even those which embodied the best of hopes. The tide of chaos beat at them, and as soon as no one was shoring up the stones any more...", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Tad Williams", "slug": "tad-williams", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tad-williams" }, "book": { "title": "To Green Angel Tower", "slug": "to-green-angel-tower", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tad-williams/to-green-angel-tower" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 150, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "chaos", "slug": "chaos", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/chaos" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tad_Williams#Part_2", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:29" }, { "id": "4cb11bbd-fbfb-48ed-b6d1-5c0256f5a003", "slug": "humankind-is-commanded", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pressfield/last-of-the-amazons/humankind-is-commanded", "text": "Humankind is commanded to ascend from savagery. This is God's mandate, which cries out from the epicenter of our being: the imperative to mount from the base to the noble, from the savage to the civil, from beast to human.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steven Pressfield", "slug": "steven-pressfield", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pressfield" }, "book": { "title": "Last of the Amazons", "slug": "last-of-the-amazons", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pressfield/last-of-the-amazons" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 119, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Pressfield#Last_of_the_Amazons_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:11" }, { "id": "9ddce29e-a669-4221-9512-fc87813cf5b4", "slug": "no-civilization-no-matter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/civilization/no-civilization-no-matter", "text": "No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Niall Ferguson", "slug": "niall-ferguson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson" }, "book": { "title": "Civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/civilization" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson#Civilization:_The_West_and_the_Rest_(2011)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:59:03" }, { "id": "55bc2b68-6829-4a72-8361-3baa32fc2bb0", "slug": "ask-yourself-if-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-rr-martin/a-dance-with-dragons/ask-yourself-if-all", "text": "Ask yourself, if all men must grub in the dirt for food, how shall any man lift his eyes to contemplate the stars? If each of us must break his back to build a hovel, who shall raise the temples to glorify the gods? For some men to be great, others must be enslaved.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George RR Martin", "slug": "george-rr-martin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-rr-martin" }, "book": { "title": "A Dance with Dragons", "slug": "a-dance-with-dragons", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-rr-martin/a-dance-with-dragons" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "slavery", "slug": "slavery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire#A_Dance_with_Dragons_(2011)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:55" }, { "id": "265ae89c-fb67-4718-b874-af5606356614", "slug": "do-you-realize", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murray-leinster/the-pirates-of-zan/do-you-realize", "text": "“Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good Old Days?” “I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir—” “It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Murray Leinster", "slug": "murray-leinster", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murray-leinster" }, "book": { "title": "The Pirates of Zan", "slug": "the-pirates-of-zan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/murray-leinster/the-pirates-of-zan" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "boredom", "slug": "boredom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/boredom" }, { "name": "adventure", "slug": "adventure", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/adventure" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Leinster#The_Pirates_of_Zan_(1959)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:03" }, { "id": "c83c4ab2-36e9-4f50-86ab-ffdbe55a43ff", "slug": "for-mankind-may", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edmund-cooper/seed-of-light/for-mankind-may", "text": "For mankind may survive and live without machines, and still be civilised. But without compassion, the human race can only elaborate upon the futile cunning and the barren intelligence of the great apes.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Edmund Cooper", "slug": "edmund-cooper", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edmund-cooper" }, "book": { "title": "Seed of Light", "slug": "seed-of-light", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edmund-cooper/seed-of-light" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "compassion", "slug": "compassion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/compassion" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Cooper#Seed_of_Light_(1959)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:58" }, { "id": "a390a936-50fb-422a-a0bc-39408c316366", "slug": "a-methodical-people", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-gemmell/waylander-ii/a-methodical-people", "text": "\"A methodical people,\" pulsed the voice of Kesa Khan. \"They call themselves civilized because they can build tall castles and pitch their tents with geometric precision, but from here you can see the reality. Ants build in the same way. Are they civilized?\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Gemmell", "slug": "david-gemmell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-gemmell" }, "book": { "title": "Waylander II", "slug": "waylander-ii", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-gemmell/waylander-ii" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Gemmell#Waylander_II:_In_the_Realm_of_the_Wolf", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:52" }, { "id": "15adfb6c-2cc9-49b1-9ffb-1fd0a7e7b6c7", "slug": "if-humans-pursue", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tim-flannery/the-weather-makers/if-humans-pursue", "text": "If humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this century, I believe the collapse of civilization due to climate change becomes inevitable.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Tim Flannery", "slug": "tim-flannery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tim-flannery" }, "book": { "title": "The Weather Makers", "slug": "the-weather-makers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tim-flannery/the-weather-makers" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 209, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "climate", "slug": "climate", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/climate" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tim_Flannery#The_Weather_Makers_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:46" }, { "id": "59dcd5fa-60f8-4a97-b2bd-d356aca072f9", "slug": "weird-evening-he-said", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tim-powers/epitaph-in-rust/weird-evening-he-said", "text": "“Weird evening,” he said. “With this wind and all.” Gladhand nodded. “Several hundred years ago it was considered a valid defense in a murder trial if you could prove the Santa Ana wind was blowing when the murder was committed. The opinion was that the dry, hot wind made everybody so irritable that any murder was almost automatically excusable. Or so I’ve heard, anyway.” Thomas pondered it. “There might be something to that,” he said. “No,” Gladhand said. “There isn’t. Start sanctioning heat-of-anger crimes and you’ve lost the last hold on the set of conventions we call…society, civilization.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Tim Powers", "slug": "tim-powers", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tim-powers" }, "book": { "title": "Epitaph in Rust", "slug": "epitaph-in-rust", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tim-powers/epitaph-in-rust" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 230, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "anger", "slug": "anger", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/anger" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tim_Powers#An_Epitaph_in_Rust_(1976)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:36" }, { "id": "eb7b1cd0-2267-449d-9e85-477da8d08068", "slug": "our-civilization-is-first", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacques-ellul/the-technological-society/our-civilization-is-first", "text": "Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jacques Ellul", "slug": "jacques-ellul", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacques-ellul" }, "book": { "title": "The Technological Society", "slug": "the-technological-society", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacques-ellul/the-technological-society" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 19, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul#The_Technological_Society_(1954)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:57:02" }, { "id": "a5a088a0-e9d5-45b8-94b6-62b705c2f21a", "slug": "technological-civilizations-dont", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-mcdevitt/cauldron/technological-civilizations-dont", "text": "Technological civilizations don’t last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jack Mcdevitt", "slug": "jack-mcdevitt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-mcdevitt" }, "book": { "title": "Cauldron", "slug": "cauldron", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-mcdevitt/cauldron" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 248, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_McDevitt#Cauldron_(2007)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:59" }, { "id": "1194633b-f555-41e4-9edf-72800c695919", "slug": "there-was-a-huge", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/vault-of-the-ages/there-was-a-huge", "text": "There was a huge sadness in it—the little men of today, gnawing apart the mighty works they no longer understood. In a few hundred years, or a few thousand, what did it matter? Nothing would be left, nothing but rubble and waving grass and the wild dogs howling where men had once lived.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Poul Anderson", "slug": "poul-anderson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson" }, "book": { "title": "Vault of the Ages", "slug": "vault-of-the-ages", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/vault-of-the-ages" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 20, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "transience", "slug": "transience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/transience" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Poul_Anderson#Vault_of_the_Ages_(1952)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:42" }, { "id": "f9a43f79-5241-4692-b4bf-ab8d120d72af", "slug": "most-cities-lived", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson/oathbringer/most-cities-lived", "text": "Most cities lived on the very edge of civilization. Everyone talked about towns and villages out in the middle of nowhere as if they were uncivilized, but she’d found people in those places pleasant, even-tempered, and comfortable with their quieter way of life. Not in cities. Cities balanced on the edge of sustainability, always one step from starvation. When you pressed so may people together, their cultures, ideas, and stenches rubbed off on one another. The results wasn’t civilization. It was contained chaos, pressurized, bottled up so it couldn’t escape.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Brandon Sanderson", "slug": "brandon-sanderson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson" }, "book": { "title": "Oathbringer", "slug": "oathbringer", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/brandon-sanderson/oathbringer" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 629, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "city", "slug": "city", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/city" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson#Oathbringer_(2017)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:38" }, { "id": "02b26f0c-06d3-491e-b842-e45431f41700", "slug": "the-whole-of-modern", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/stand-on-zanzibar/the-whole-of-modern", "text": "“The whole of modern so-called civilised existence is an attempt to deny reality insofar as it exists. When did Don last look at the stars, when did Norman last get soaked in a rainstorm? The stars as far as these people are concerned are the Manhattan-pattern!” He jerked his thumb at a window beyond which the city’s treasure-house of coloured light glimmered gaudily.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Brunner", "slug": "john-brunner", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner" }, "book": { "title": "Stand On Zanzibar", "slug": "stand-on-zanzibar", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/stand-on-zanzibar" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Brunner#Stand_on_Zanzibar_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:56:09" }, { "id": "65357d22-cbf5-4580-b8c3-ab37d6c7cd9b", "slug": "the-desert-was", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fante/ask-the-dust/the-desert-was", "text": "The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness...All the evil of the world seemed not evil at all, but inevitable and good and part of that endless struggle to keep the desert down.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Fante", "slug": "john-fante", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fante" }, "book": { "title": "Ask The Dust", "slug": "ask-the-dust", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-fante/ask-the-dust" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "evil", "slug": "evil", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evil" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Fante#Ask_the_Dust_(1939)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:57" }, { "id": "59fc5589-4e41-4d61-983d-943f473622fb", "slug": "civilization-after-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-david-roberts/shantaram/civilization-after-all", "text": "\"Civilization, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Gregory David Roberts", "slug": "gregory-david-roberts", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-david-roberts" }, "book": { "title": "Shantaram", "slug": "shantaram", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/gregory-david-roberts/shantaram" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "law", "slug": "law", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/law" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shantaram#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:21" }, { "id": "2245fb4f-1903-40bc-a7c7-02e9a73384fa", "slug": "to-conceive-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin/enquiry-concerning-political-justice/to-conceive-that", "text": "To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation, is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilisation and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea. It was once universally admitted and approved; it is now necessarily upon the decline.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Godwin", "slug": "william-godwin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin" }, "book": { "title": "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice", "slug": "enquiry-concerning-political-justice", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin/enquiry-concerning-political-justice" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "punishment", "slug": "punishment", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/punishment" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Godwin#Enquiry_Concerning_Political_Justice_(1793)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:09" }, { "id": "0c9c637c-3ef4-4ee6-a5d9-d1c5cc13efd6", "slug": "there-is-a-clever", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alexandre-dumas/the-count-of-monte-cristo/there-is-a-clever", "text": "There is … a clever maxim which bears upon what I was saying to you some little while ago, and that is, that unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right and wholesome state, revolts at crime. Still, from an artificial civilisation have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness...", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alexandre Dumas", "slug": "alexandre-dumas", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alexandre-dumas" }, "book": { "title": "The Count of Monte Cristo", "slug": "the-count-of-monte-cristo", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alexandre-dumas/the-count-of-monte-cristo" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evil", "slug": "evil", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evil" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:54:03" }, { "id": "0004c3e2-1b6e-45b2-9a40-145ec0644a4c", "slug": "sometimes-the-cause", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire/sometimes-the-cause", "text": "Sometimes the cause of civilization is best served by a hard stare into the soul of its opposite.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Pollan", "slug": "michael-pollan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan" }, "book": { "title": "The Botany of Desire", "slug": "the-botany-of-desire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-pollan/the-botany-of-desire" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 41, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan#The_Botany_of_Desire_(2001)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:33" }, { "id": "7f3827ae-f6bb-4ace-a0ec-c4f032ce1bf8", "slug": "since-industrialization-we-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/russell-brand/revolution/since-industrialization-we-have", "text": "Since industrialization, we have moved rapidly out of synchronicity with nature and our own nature.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Russell Brand", "slug": "russell-brand", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/russell-brand" }, "book": { "title": "Revolution", "slug": "revolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/russell-brand/revolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Russell_Brand#Revolution_(2014)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:27" }, { "id": "9601e304-fa0c-48b0-a7da-d95330eebf7b", "slug": "it-was-a-truism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/it-was-a-truism", "text": "It was a truism that all civilisations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Iain M. Banks", "slug": "iain-m-banks", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks" }, "book": { "title": "The Algebraist", "slug": "the-algebraist", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 71, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "loneliness", "slug": "loneliness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/loneliness" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#The_Algebraist_(2004)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:22" }, { "id": "6bf69c3e-986b-4a36-904d-1e642aa43a90", "slug": "avoidance-of-a-global", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-p-huntington/the-clash-of-civilizations-and-the-remaking-of-world-order/avoidance-of-a-global", "text": "Avoidance of a global war of civilizations depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of global politics.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Samuel P. Huntington", "slug": "samuel-p-huntington", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-p-huntington" }, "book": { "title": "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", "slug": "the-clash-of-civilizations-and-the-remaking-of-world-order", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-p-huntington/the-clash-of-civilizations-and-the-remaking-of-world-order" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "peace", "slug": "peace", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/peace" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington#The_Clash_of_Civilizations_and_the_Remaking_of_World_Order_(1996)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:50" }, { "id": "327bbe09-ea3f-4086-839d-6bd829f0fefd", "slug": "you-cannot-make", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-beerbohm/zuleika-dobson/you-cannot-make", "text": "You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost —- he becomes a unit in unreason.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Max Beerbohm", "slug": "max-beerbohm", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-beerbohm" }, "book": { "title": "Zuleika Dobson", "slug": "zuleika-dobson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-beerbohm/zuleika-dobson" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "crowd", "slug": "crowd", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/crowd" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Beerbohm#Zuleika_Dobson_(1911)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:40" }, { "id": "52e10f64-0060-4bac-8253-f09536526e50", "slug": "may-we-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener/the-human-use-of-human-beings/may-we-have", "text": "May we have the courage to face the eventual doom of our civilization as we have the courage to face the certainty of our personal doom. The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belong to acquiescence and hence to weakness.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Norbert Wiener", "slug": "norbert-wiener", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener" }, "book": { "title": "The Human Use Of Human Beings", "slug": "the-human-use-of-human-beings", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/norbert-wiener/the-human-use-of-human-beings" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 47, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "courage", "slug": "courage", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/courage" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener#The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings_(1950)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:18" }, { "id": "4728b430-8510-4908-bdc0-1b0b52e0f81b", "slug": "in-fact-one", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/in-fact-one", "text": "In fact, one of the main lesson to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies (as well as from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power. [...] The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources. On reflection, it's no surprise that declines of societies tend to follow swiftly on their peaks.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "Collapse", "slug": "collapse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 509, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "ecology", "slug": "ecology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_(2005)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:07" }, { "id": "1636e4a8-5d99-41e0-a9da-b952ce918db5", "slug": "the-societies-to-which", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/the-world-until-yesterday/the-societies-to-which", "text": "The societies to which most readers of this book belong represent a narrow slice of human cultural diversity. Societies from that slice achieved world dominance not because of a general superiority, but for specific reasons: their technological, political, and military advantages derived from their early origins of agriculture, due in turn to their productive local wild domesticable plant and animal species. Despite those particular advantages, modern industrial societies didn’t also develop superior approaches to raising children, treating the elderly, settling disputes, avoiding non-communicable diseases, and other societal problems. Thousands of traditional societies developed a wide array of different approaches to those problems.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "The World Until Yesterday", "slug": "the-world-until-yesterday", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/the-world-until-yesterday" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#The_World_Until_Yesterday:_What_Can_We_Learn_from_Traditional_Societies%3F_(2012)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:07" }, { "id": "0dff703d-4e4e-4c30-8c1d-d6846c97f481", "slug": "perhaps-we-could", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/the-world-until-yesterday/perhaps-we-could", "text": "Perhaps we could benefit by selectively adopting some of those traditional practices. Some of us already do so, with demonstrated benefits to our health and happiness. In some respects we moderns are misfits; our bodies and our practices now face conditions different from those under which they evolved, and to which they became adapted. But we should also not go to the opposite extreme of romanticizing the past and longing for simpler times. Many traditional practices are ones that we can consider ourselves blessed to have discarded — such as infanticide, abandoning or killing elderly people, facing periodic risk of starvation, being at heightened risk from environmental dangers and infectious diseases, often seeing one’s children die, and living in constant fear of being attacked. Traditional societies may not only suggest to us some better living practices, but may also help us appreciate some advantages of our own society that we take for granted.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jared Diamond", "slug": "jared-diamond", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond" }, "book": { "title": "The World Until Yesterday", "slug": "the-world-until-yesterday", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/the-world-until-yesterday" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "tradition", "slug": "tradition", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/tradition" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#The_World_Until_Yesterday:_What_Can_We_Learn_from_Traditional_Societies%3F_(2012)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:07" }, { "id": "f6713742-eb41-4ddf-868d-085e73214ace", "slug": "the-function-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk/the-function-of-the", "text": "The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "W.E.B. Dubois", "slug": "web-dubois", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois" }, "book": { "title": "The Souls of Black Folk", "slug": "the-souls-of-black-folk", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "education", "slug": "education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/education" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois#The_Souls_of_Black_Folk_(1903)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:02" }, { "id": "057bf787-151c-426f-ab8c-d0411a31562f", "slug": "it-is-then", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk/it-is-then", "text": "It is, then, the strife of all honorable men and women of the twentieth century to see that in the future competition of the races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and imprudence and cruelty.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "W.E.B. Dubois", "slug": "web-dubois", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois" }, "book": { "title": "The Souls of Black Folk", "slug": "the-souls-of-black-folk", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/web-dubois/the-souls-of-black-folk" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "kindness", "slug": "kindness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/kindness" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "racism", "slug": "racism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/racism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois#The_Souls_of_Black_Folk_(1903)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:02" }, { "id": "c572ee91-63b2-4101-992f-fb2509f3605a", "slug": "if-barbarians-recognized", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/beyond-the-gap/if-barbarians-recognized", "text": "If barbarians recognized that they were barbarians, they wouldn’t be so barbarous any more.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Harry Turtledove", "slug": "harry-turtledove", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove" }, "book": { "title": "Beyond the Gap", "slug": "beyond-the-gap", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/beyond-the-gap" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 232, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "self-knowledge", "slug": "self-knowledge", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/self-knowledge" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_Turtledove#Beyond_the_Gap_(2007)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:57" }, { "id": "5d033f01-cb0f-4227-80c1-f611c4328fd9", "slug": "she-comedy-it-is-who", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-meredith/the-egoist/she-comedy-it-is-who", "text": "She [Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "George Meredith", "slug": "george-meredith", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-meredith" }, "book": { "title": "The Egoist", "slug": "the-egoist", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-meredith/the-egoist" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Meredith#The_Egoist_(1879)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:35" }, { "id": "4b1d6d09-6844-4ce9-8a42-72cf637280ae", "slug": "where-civilization-entailed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians/where-civilization-entailed", "text": "Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of a dependent people, I was opposed to civilization...", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "J. M. Coetzee", "slug": "j-m-coetzee", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee" }, "book": { "title": "Waiting for the Barbarians", "slug": "waiting-for-the-barbarians", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 41, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "colonialism", "slug": "colonialism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/colonialism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee#Waiting_for_the_Barbarians_(1980)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:29" }, { "id": "91d959b5-999a-488b-9f1a-7c83f3e43be0", "slug": "we-have-a-membership", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-margarets/we-have-a-membership", "text": "“We have a membership provided the ISTO doesn’t declare all Earthians a barbarian people.” “I don’t know what that means,” I persisted, even though this wasn’t strictly part of the subject. Father gritted his teeth. “ISTO recognizes four types of creatures: civilized, semicivilized, barbarians, and animals. Civilized people know about, care about, and protect their environments. Semicivilized people know and care, but can’t do anything…” “Why not?” Mother said, “Because something prevents their acting in their own self-interest. Public apathy. Commercial interference. Religious opposition. Governmental corruption. The Gentherans say the humans have a lot of that.” Father frowned at her and went on. “Barbarians know but don’t care about their worlds, and animals don’t even know.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Sheri S. Tepper", "slug": "sheri-s-tepper", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper" }, "book": { "title": "The Margarets", "slug": "the-margarets", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-margarets" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 29, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "ecology", "slug": "ecology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper#The_Margarets_(2007)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:28" }, { "id": "5f9d53dc-234c-4fcb-ad7b-fb68947d43c8", "slug": "we-keep-falling", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents/we-keep-falling", "text": "We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Octavia E. Butler", "slug": "octavia-e-butler", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler" }, "book": { "title": "Parable of the Talents", "slug": "parable-of-the-talents", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-talents" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 392, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Octavia_Butler#Parable_of_the_Talents_(1998)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:11" }, { "id": "1af2da08-7db5-4e9a-8247-fa7ce5de45ac", "slug": "civilization-is-to-groups", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-sower/civilization-is-to-groups", "text": "Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Octavia E. Butler", "slug": "octavia-e-butler", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler" }, "book": { "title": "Parable of the Sower", "slug": "parable-of-the-sower", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/octavia-e-butler/parable-of-the-sower" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 101, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "intelligence", "slug": "intelligence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/intelligence" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Octavia_Butler#Parable_of_the_Sower_(1993)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:10" }, { "id": "7a64b333-bbe3-41dd-9e44-00f36e7b89c1", "slug": "in-every-age", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacob-bronowski/the-ascent-of-man/in-every-age", "text": "In every age there is a turning point, a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world. It is frozen in the statues of Easter Island that put a stop to time—and in the medieval clocks of Europe that once also seemed to say the last word about the heavens for ever. Each culture tries to fix its visionary moment, when it was transformed by a new conception either of nature or of man. But in retrospect, what commands our attention as much are the continuities—the thoughts that run or recur from one civilization to another.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jacob Bronowski", "slug": "jacob-bronowski", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacob-bronowski" }, "book": { "title": "The Ascent Of Man", "slug": "the-ascent-of-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jacob-bronowski/the-ascent-of-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jacob_Bronowski#The_Ascent_of_Man_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:49" }, { "id": "302f7958-0a9a-4ca7-8ec3-a858e8cdb362", "slug": "anyway-hurt-feelings", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/kiln-people/anyway-hurt-feelings", "text": "Anyway, hurt feelings aren’t my concern, just facts. The crux is that civilization falls without accountability. What people do with it is their own concern.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Brin", "slug": "david-brin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin" }, "book": { "title": "Kil’n People", "slug": "kiln-people", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/kiln-people" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 82, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "responsibility", "slug": "responsibility", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/responsibility" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brin#Kiln_People_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:46" }, { "id": "07f1852b-0497-4711-992e-c888f56559dc", "slug": "this-is-a-lovely", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/the-uplift-war/this-is-a-lovely", "text": "“This is a lovely world,” he sighed. “And yet it has suffered horror. Sometimes, so-called civilization seems bent on destroying those very things which it is sworn to protect.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "David Brin", "slug": "david-brin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin" }, "book": { "title": "The Uplift War", "slug": "the-uplift-war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-brin/the-uplift-war" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 590, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brin#The_Uplift_War_(1987)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:43" }, { "id": "e291ccfd-f85c-48af-afad-f89da6daf11e", "slug": "listen-are-we-helpless", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz/listen-are-we-helpless", "text": "Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America — burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion, he thought.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Walter M. Miller Jr.", "slug": "walter-m-miller-jr", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr" }, "book": { "title": "A Canticle for Leibowitz", "slug": "a-canticle-for-leibowitz", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-m-miller-jr/a-canticle-for-leibowitz" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_M._Miller_Jr.#Fiat_Voluntas_Tua", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:41" }, { "id": "e5c35cb3-0342-4346-9c91-a8bbeeadd0d8", "slug": "most-men-have", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-outsider/most-men-have", "text": "Most men have nothing in their heads but their physical needs; put them on a desert island with nothing to occupy their minds and they would go insane. They lack real motive. The curse of civilization is boredom.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Colin Wilson", "slug": "colin-wilson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson" }, "book": { "title": "The Outsider", "slug": "the-outsider", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-outsider" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "boredom", "slug": "boredom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/boredom" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson#The_Outsider_(1956)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:21" }, { "id": "8bede708-bebf-4486-ba1b-0afdbf6555fc", "slug": "every-single-one", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marilynne-robinson/gilead/every-single-one", "text": "Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Marilynne Robinson", "slug": "marilynne-robinson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marilynne-robinson" }, "book": { "title": "Gilead", "slug": "gilead", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marilynne-robinson/gilead" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "beauty", "slug": "beauty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beauty" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marilynne_Robinson#Gilead_(2004)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:42" }, { "id": "70aa1d85-21fe-4a81-8696-73ffb0f4af78", "slug": "time-and-time", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-rider-haggard/she/time-and-time", "text": "Time and time again have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been and passed away and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Henry Rider Haggard", "slug": "henry-rider-haggard", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-rider-haggard" }, "book": { "title": "She", "slug": "she", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-rider-haggard/she" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "transience", "slug": "transience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/transience" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._Rider_Haggard#She_(1887)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:27" }, { "id": "efabf9a4-e854-43e7-acc9-69c45d8288fb", "slug": "in-the-last", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution/in-the-last", "text": "In the last centuries of the empire, educational standards and literacy had fallen. In the dulled heads of the masses, distracted by cheap food and the barbaric spectacles of the coliseums, the values on which Rome had been founded and the ancient rationalism of the Greeks had been replaced by mysticism and superstition. It was—Honorius had explained to his pupil—as if a whole culture was losing its mind. People were forgetting how to think, and soon they would forget they had forgotten. And, to Honorius’s thinking, Christianity only exacerbated that problem. “You know, Augustine warned us that belief in the old myths was fading—even a century and a half ago, as the dogma of the Christians took root. And with the loss of the myths, so vanishes the learning of a thousand years, which are codified in those myths, and the monolithic dogmas of the Church will snuff out rational inquiry for ten more centuries. The light is fading, Athalric.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Stephen Baxter", "slug": "stephen-baxter", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter" }, "book": { "title": "Evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-baxter/evolution" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 502, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "religion", "slug": "religion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion" }, { "name": "education", "slug": "education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/education" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter#Evolution_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:24" }, { "id": "b3f358ea-fb0c-4307-9c14-67ef855be529", "slug": "everything-great-in-western", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae/everything-great-in-western", "text": "Everything great in western culture has come from the quarrel with nature.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Camille Paglia", "slug": "camille-paglia", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia" }, "book": { "title": "Sexual Personae", "slug": "sexual-personae", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 28, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia#Sexual_Personae:_Art_and_Decadence_from_Nefertiti_to_Emily_Dickinson_(1990)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:17" }, { "id": "d8427119-514a-4a49-9190-0bb718b1e32c", "slug": "perhaps-the-first", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/brian-aldiss/greybeard/perhaps-the-first", "text": "Perhaps the first fire, the first tool, the first wheel, the first carving in a limestone cave, had each possessed a symbolic rather than a practical value, had each been pressed to serve distortion rather than reality. It was a sort of madness that had driven man from his humble sites on the edges of the woods into towns and cities, into arts and wars, into religious crusades, into martyrdom and prostitution, into dyspepsia and fasting, into love and hatred, into this present cul-de-sac; it had all come about in pursuit of symbols. In the beginning was the symbol, and darkness was over the face of the Earth.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Brian Aldiss", "slug": "brian-aldiss", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/brian-aldiss" }, "book": { "title": "Greybeard", "slug": "greybeard", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/brian-aldiss/greybeard" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 91, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "symbols", "slug": "symbols", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/symbols" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brian_Aldiss#Greybeard_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:12" }, { "id": "0667f4e2-a7ee-46b1-889b-67dc3e000a8f", "slug": "if-mankind-were", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/a-heritage-of-stars/if-mankind-were", "text": "If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Clifford D. Simak", "slug": "clifford-d-simak", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak" }, "book": { "title": "A Heritage of Stars", "slug": "a-heritage-of-stars", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/a-heritage-of-stars" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak#A_Heritage_of_Stars_(1977)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:02" }, { "id": "f7e5b0d3-751e-454b-b7ce-e212b11b573c", "slug": "these-people-must", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/city/these-people-must", "text": "These people must be helped to find themselves in this new world, but they must not know that they’re being helped. To let them know would destroy confidence and dignity, and human dignity is the keystone of any civilization.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Clifford D. Simak", "slug": "clifford-d-simak", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak" }, "book": { "title": "City", "slug": "city", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/city" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 31, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "dignity", "slug": "dignity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/dignity" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak#City_(1952)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:59" }, { "id": "eec8b1a9-4ee3-4857-924f-4e34e92143f9", "slug": "he-wondered-if-in-achieving", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-oak-and-the-ram/he-wondered-if-in-achieving", "text": "He wondered if, in achieving such a noble way of life, a people became automatically vulnerable to destruction by those who had not achieved it. If so, it was an irony of cosmic proportions.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Moorcock", "slug": "michael-moorcock", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock" }, "book": { "title": "The Oak and the Ram", "slug": "the-oak-and-the-ram", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-oak-and-the-ram" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 125, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "irony", "slug": "irony", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/irony" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock#The_Oak_and_the_Ram_(1973)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:42" }, { "id": "d03cc6e4-5b0b-44e1-9ae1-e9e747d634af", "slug": "the-barbarians-dont", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-english-assassin/the-barbarians-dont", "text": "The barbarians don’t come from outside the walls any more, do they?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Michael Moorcock", "slug": "michael-moorcock", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock" }, "book": { "title": "The English Assassin", "slug": "the-english-assassin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-english-assassin" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 579, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock#The_English_Assassin_(1972)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:37" }, { "id": "40e393b5-0c83-46ed-9100-c97c34ad1e78", "slug": "western-culture-is-in-its", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire/we-are-doomed/western-culture-is-in-its", "text": "Western culture is in its twilight; there is a dark age ahead; and while college-humanities fads and \"secular-progressive values\" have certainly done much damage, they are symptoms, not causes - fragments of junk sucked into a vacuum. The fundamental reason why so much of our culture is shit - either literally, like Signor Manzoni's masterwork, or figuratively - is exhaustion, cultural exhaustion.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Derbyshire", "slug": "john-derbyshire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire" }, "book": { "title": "We Are Doomed", "slug": "we-are-doomed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire/we-are-doomed" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Derbyshire#We_Are_Doomed:_Reclaiming_Conservative_Pessimism_(2009)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:28" }, { "id": "ebd07213-d6fd-4fdd-8167-1a3bdd290f67", "slug": "the-mark-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/tales-of-neveryon/the-mark-of-the", "text": "The mark of the truly civilized is their (truly baffling to the likes of you and me) patience with what truly baffles.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Samuel R. Delany", "slug": "samuel-r-delany", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany" }, "book": { "title": "Tales of Neveryon", "slug": "tales-of-neveryon", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/tales-of-neveryon" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 140, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "patience", "slug": "patience", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/patience" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#Tales_of_Nev%C3%A8r%C3%BFon_(1979)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:48:19" }, { "id": "c1a76de3-ecab-4d60-b6a6-b386a51cdf60", "slug": "t-here-is-a-flaw", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-bowen/a-time-in-rome/t-here-is-a-flaw", "text": "[T]here is a flaw in civilization from the instant it has to admit fear.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Elizabeth Bowen", "slug": "elizabeth-bowen", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-bowen" }, "book": { "title": "A Time in Rome", "slug": "a-time-in-rome", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-bowen/a-time-in-rome" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 23, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "fear", "slug": "fear", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fear" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen#A_Time_in_Rome_(1960)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:52" }, { "id": "91d8df35-1510-413e-a748-9b77e40b1352", "slug": "the-slaves-of-developed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/the-slaves-of-developed", "text": "The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herbert Marcuse", "slug": "herbert-marcuse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse" }, "book": { "title": "One-Dimensional Man", "slug": "one-dimensional-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 32, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "slavery", "slug": "slavery", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/slavery" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "89f758b5-aff9-4f64-814a-f1a32709f6e6", "slug": "we-are-again", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man/we-are-again", "text": "We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, … the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herbert Marcuse", "slug": "herbert-marcuse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse" }, "book": { "title": "One-Dimensional Man", "slug": "one-dimensional-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/one-dimensional-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 9, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#One-Dimensional_Man_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:38" }, { "id": "8909bfb4-b9f4-4ea3-be19-fd00a487b7b3", "slug": "either-one-defines", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/eros-and-civilization/either-one-defines", "text": "Either one defines “personality” and “individuality” in terms of their possibilities within the established form of civilization, in which case their realization is for the vast majority tantamount to successful adjustment. Or one defines them in terms of their transcending content, including their socially denied potentialities beyond (and beneath) their actual existence; in this case, their realization would imply transgression, beyond the established form of civilization, to radically new modes of “personality” and “individuality” incompatible with the prevailing ones. Today, this would mean “curing” the patient to become a rebel or (which is saying the same thing) a martyr.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herbert Marcuse", "slug": "herbert-marcuse", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse" }, "book": { "title": "Eros and Civilization", "slug": "eros-and-civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herbert-marcuse/eros-and-civilization" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "rebellion", "slug": "rebellion", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/rebellion" }, { "name": "individualism", "slug": "individualism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/individualism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#Eros_and_Civilization:_A_Philosophical_Inquiry_into_Freud_(1955)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:37" }, { "id": "83be5f5c-e663-4432-b32f-4ca0acabd390", "slug": "man-is-fundamentally", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilhelm-reich/the-mass-psychology-of-fascism/man-is-fundamentally", "text": "MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic; their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine? When I say \"animal,\" I do not mean anything bad, cruel or \"base\"; I am stating a biological fact. Man has developed the peculiar concept that he is not an animal at all, but, well — man; a creature which long since has shed that which is \"bad,\" which is \"animal.\" He demarcates himself in all possible ways from the bad animal and points, in proof of his \"being better,\" to culture and civilization which distinguish him from the animal. He shows, in his whole behavior, his \"theories of values,\" his moral philosophies, his \"monkey trials\" and such, that he does not want to be reminded of the fact that basically he is an animal, an animal, furthermore, which has much more in common with the \"animal\" than with that being which he asserts to be and dreams of being. The theory of the German Übermensch has this origin. Man shows by his maliciousness, his inability to live in peace with his kind, his wars, that what distinguishes him from the other animals is only his unbounded sadism and the mechanical trinity of the authoritarian concept of life, mechanistic science and the machine. If one looks at the results of civilization as they present themselves over long periods of time, one finds that these contentions of man are not only erroneous; more than that, they seem to be made expressly for the purpose of making man forget that he is an animal.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Wilhelm Reich", "slug": "wilhelm-reich", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilhelm-reich" }, "book": { "title": "The Mass Psychology of Fascism", "slug": "the-mass-psychology-of-fascism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wilhelm-reich/the-mass-psychology-of-fascism" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "animals", "slug": "animals", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/animals" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich#Ch._10_:_Work_Democracy", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:34" }, { "id": "b771f537-e29a-4643-8316-8dc19bd25e2f", "slug": "wilderness-is-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire/wilderness-is-not", "text": "Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Edward Abbey", "slug": "edward-abbey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey" }, "book": { "title": "Desert Solitaire", "slug": "desert-solitaire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 148, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#Desert_Solitaire_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:31" }, { "id": "6a82d025-5b61-431c-a987-26b54a187c37", "slug": "to-make-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire/to-make-the", "text": "To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori; Civilization is Sartre; culture Cocteau; Civilization is mutual aid and self-defense; culture is the judge, the lawbook and the forces of Law & Ordure (sic); Civilization is uprising, insurrection, revolution; culture is the war of state against state, or of machines against people, as in Hungary and Vietnam; Civilization is tolerance, detachment and humor, or passion, anger, revenge; culture is the entrance examination, the gas chamber, the doctoral dissertation and the electric chair; Civilization is the Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno fighting the Germans, then the Reds, then the Whites, then the Reds again; culture is Stalin and the Fatherland; Civilization is Jesus turning water into wine; culture is Christ walking on the waves; Civilization is a youth with a Molotov cocktail in his hand; culture is the Soviet tank or the L.A. cop that guns him down; Civilization is the wild river; culture, 592,000 tons of cement; Civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates, like tired, sick, stifled blood.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Edward Abbey", "slug": "edward-abbey", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey" }, "book": { "title": "Desert Solitaire", "slug": "desert-solitaire", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/desert-solitaire" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 308, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "culture", "slug": "culture", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/culture" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#Desert_Solitaire_(1968)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:31" }, { "id": "586cbede-6c88-4322-9606-1bec9977b1c9", "slug": "your-true-modern", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac/your-true-modern", "text": "Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow. Turn him loose for a day on the land, and if the spot does not happen to be a golf links or a ‘scenic’ area, he is bored stiff. If crops could be raised by hydroponics instead of farming, it would suit him very well. Synthetic substitutes for wood, leather, wool, and other natural land products suit him better than the originals. In short, land is something he has ‘outgrown.’", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aldo Leopold", "slug": "aldo-leopold", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold" }, "book": { "title": "A Sand County Almanac", "slug": "a-sand-county-almanac", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 223, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold#%22The_Land_Ethic%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:21" }, { "id": "1c830d0b-64f4-4cd5-ada2-8012fe880828", "slug": "wilderness-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac/wilderness-is-the", "text": "Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aldo Leopold", "slug": "aldo-leopold", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold" }, "book": { "title": "A Sand County Almanac", "slug": "a-sand-county-almanac", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 188, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold#%22Wilderness%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:21" }, { "id": "3b5841cc-f996-4dc1-a68c-d3eaff73dea7", "slug": "our-grandfathers-were", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac/our-grandfathers-were", "text": "Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aldo Leopold", "slug": "aldo-leopold", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold" }, "book": { "title": "A Sand County Almanac", "slug": "a-sand-county-almanac", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 109, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold#%22Wisconsin:_Marshland_Elegy,%22_%22Wisconsin:_The_Sand_Counties%22_%22Wisconsin:_On_a_Monument_to_the_Pigeon,%22_and_%22Wisconsin:_Flambeau%22", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:20" }, { "id": "673a2c69-fe4b-4412-a8ca-84aa1add3978", "slug": "when-any-civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/oryx-and-crake/when-any-civilization", "text": "“When any civilization is dust and ashes,\" he said, \"art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Margaret Atwood", "slug": "margaret-atwood", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood" }, "book": { "title": "Oryx and Crake", "slug": "oryx-and-crake", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/oryx-and-crake" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "art", "slug": "art", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood#Oryx_and_Crake_(2003)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:11" }, { "id": "28915817-0f96-494a-9cb9-9af0f4392eef", "slug": "civilization-is-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-fountainhead/civilization-is-the", "text": "\"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ayn Rand", "slug": "ayn-rand", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand" }, "book": { "title": "The Fountainhead", "slug": "the-fountainhead", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-fountainhead" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 742, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead#Part_IV_(_Howard_Roark_)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:10" }, { "id": "b4097ad5-12a3-41d6-b05f-3ef7f158c1b4", "slug": "most-civilisations-perhaps", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/most-civilisations-perhaps", "text": "Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ursula K. Le Guin", "slug": "ursula-k-le-guin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin" }, "book": { "title": "The Telling", "slug": "the-telling", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 32, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#The_Telling_(2000)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:54" }, { "id": "672dafd3-4c9b-430d-88c5-da55f4bb157a", "slug": "if-civilization-has", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-left-hand-of-darkness/if-civilization-has", "text": "If civilization has an opposite, it is war.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Ursula K. Le Guin", "slug": "ursula-k-le-guin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin" }, "book": { "title": "The Left Hand of Darkness", "slug": "the-left-hand-of-darkness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-left-hand-of-darkness" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 101, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness_(1969)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:53" }, { "id": "60442448-eed0-4283-a655-e7279ecc43e6", "slug": "millions-of-human", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin/the-conquest-of-bread/millions-of-human", "text": "Millions of human beings have labored to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves today. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labor to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Peter Kropotkin", "slug": "peter-kropotkin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin" }, "book": { "title": "The Conquest of Bread", "slug": "the-conquest-of-bread", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin/the-conquest-of-bread" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin#The_Conquest_of_Bread_(1892)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:37" }, { "id": "5ca7ec8b-345d-45b0-be8b-2879324ea67c", "slug": "we-used-to-build", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/neither-here-nor-there/we-used-to-build", "text": "We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Bill Bryson", "slug": "bill-bryson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson" }, "book": { "title": "Neither Here Nor There", "slug": "neither-here-nor-there", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/neither-here-nor-there" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "consumerism", "slug": "consumerism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consumerism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Bryson#Neither_Here_nor_There:_Travels_in_Europe_(1991)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:35" }, { "id": "80329da0-a8e1-4c33-bf68-33567c2b18a1", "slug": "we-tend-to-see", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/diane-ackerman/a-natural-history-of-the-senses/we-tend-to-see", "text": "We tend to see our distant past through a reverse telescope that compresses it: a short time as hunter-gatherers, a long time as \"civilized\" people. But civilization is a recent stage of human life, and, for all we know, it may not be any great achievement. It may not even be the final stage. We have been alive on this planet as recognizable humans for about two million years, and for all but the last two or three thousand we’ve been hunter-gatherers. We may sing in choirs and park our rages behind a desk, but we patrol the world with many of a hunter-gatherer’s drives, motives, and skills. These aren’t knowable truths. Should an alien civilization ever contact us, the greatest gift they could give us would be a set of home movies: films of our species at each stage in our evolution.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Diane Ackerman", "slug": "diane-ackerman", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/diane-ackerman" }, "book": { "title": "A Natural History of the Senses", "slug": "a-natural-history-of-the-senses", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/diane-ackerman/a-natural-history-of-the-senses" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 129, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "history", "slug": "history", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Diane_Ackerman#A_Natural_History_of_the_Senses_(1990)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:34" }, { "id": "f56f9431-16ba-486f-8e87-8a938e611a49", "slug": "a-civilization-at-war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-erikson/the-bonehunters/a-civilization-at-war", "text": "A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilisation. Thus a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Steven Erikson", "slug": "steven-erikson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-erikson" }, "book": { "title": "The Bonehunters", "slug": "the-bonehunters", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-erikson/the-bonehunters" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "enemies", "slug": "enemies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/enemies" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Erikson#The_Bonehunters_(2006)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:32" }, { "id": "ea06f557-e49c-4e59-b350-fd21c28a339f", "slug": "the-sign-said", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/the-sign-said", "text": "The sign said: Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion. \"It seemed to me,\" said Wonko the Sane, \"that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Douglas Adams", "slug": "douglas-adams", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams" }, "book": { "title": "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish", "slug": "so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "madness", "slug": "madness", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/madness" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Chapter_31", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:28" }, { "id": "7bec8781-d41a-4ccf-94bd-e1f023d55552", "slug": "it-said-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-primary-phase/it-said-the", "text": "It said: \"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. \"For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Douglas Adams", "slug": "douglas-adams", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams" }, "book": { "title": "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: Primary Phase", "slug": "the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-primary-phase", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-primary-phase" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Chapter_35", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:46:26" }, { "id": "ab66c59d-17ec-4147-99a0-2e47bb1fd59a", "slug": "perhaps-it-is-historically", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-maynard-keynes/the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace/perhaps-it-is-historically", "text": "Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "John Maynard Keynes", "slug": "john-maynard-keynes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-maynard-keynes" }, "book": { "title": "The Economic Consequences of the Peace", "slug": "the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-maynard-keynes/the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 238, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes#The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace_(1919)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:53" }, { "id": "f6850627-e313-4519-a066-35c0d094a9d9", "slug": "in-the-end", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-mitchell/gone-with-the-wind/in-the-end", "text": "\"In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out. At least, it has been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Gotterdammerung.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Margaret Mitchell", "slug": "margaret-mitchell", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-mitchell" }, "book": { "title": "Gone with the Wind", "slug": "gone-with-the-wind", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-mitchell/gone-with-the-wind" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "survival", "slug": "survival", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/survival" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(novel)#Quotes", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:49" }, { "id": "9a0bfb81-5518-4d27-9bd1-6e85b9ae8364", "slug": "the-invention-of-gunpowder", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-von-clausewitz/on-war/the-invention-of-gunpowder", "text": "The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Carl von Clausewitz", "slug": "carl-von-clausewitz", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-von-clausewitz" }, "book": { "title": "On War", "slug": "on-war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-von-clausewitz/on-war" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "war", "slug": "war", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war" }, { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz#(no_chapter_info)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:37" }, { "id": "1d71336c-75fd-4008-b642-8c4000fefaca", "slug": "a-multitude-of-causes", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-z-danielewski/house-of-leaves/a-multitude-of-causes", "text": "[A] multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Mark Z. Danielewski", "slug": "mark-z-danielewski", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-z-danielewski" }, "book": { "title": "House of Leaves", "slug": "house-of-leaves", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-z-danielewski/house-of-leaves" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 167, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "thinking", "slug": "thinking", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/thinking" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves#The_Navidson_Record", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:36" }, { "id": "47e8e418-efc4-4e1e-a99a-6eb02bb0c508", "slug": "evolution-made-civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach/one/evolution-made-civilization", "text": "Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to Love.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Richard Bach", "slug": "richard-bach", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach" }, "book": { "title": "One", "slug": "one", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-bach/one" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "evolution", "slug": "evolution", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evolution" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Bach#One_(1988)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:19" }, { "id": "a0e1c272-f4f8-4fe2-ab41-8a6e3828fa6a", "slug": "literate-man-civilized", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marshall-mcluhan/understanding-media/literate-man-civilized", "text": "Literate man, civilized man, tends to restrict and to separate functions, whereas tribal man has freely extended the form of his body to include the universe. (p. 117)", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Marshall McLuhan", "slug": "marshall-mcluhan", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marshall-mcluhan" }, "book": { "title": "Understanding Media", "slug": "understanding-media", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/marshall-mcluhan/understanding-media" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#Understanding_Media_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:45:13" }, { "id": "5dccbf4e-8225-4a92-8a69-e5f736f72703", "slug": "much-advance-publicity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello/one-minute-wisdom/much-advance-publicity", "text": "Much advance publicity was made for the address the Master would deliver on The Destruction of the World and a large crowd gathered at the monastery grounds to hear him. The address was over in less than a minute. All he said was: \"These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness.\"", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Anthony De Mello", "slug": "anthony-de-mello", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello" }, "book": { "title": "One Minute Wisdom", "slug": "one-minute-wisdom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-de-mello/one-minute-wisdom" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "politics", "slug": "politics", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_de_Mello#One_Minute_Wisdom_(1989)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:47" }, { "id": "7d61ee6f-5390-47e2-b416-093011fd4a09", "slug": "the-greeks-put", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/friedrich-schiller/on-the-aesthetic-education-of-man/the-greeks-put", "text": "The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Friedrich Schiller", "slug": "friedrich-schiller", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/friedrich-schiller" }, "book": { "title": "On the Aesthetic Education of Man", "slug": "on-the-aesthetic-education-of-man", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/friedrich-schiller/on-the-aesthetic-education-of-man" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schiller#On_the_Aesthetic_Education_of_Man_(1794)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:35" }, { "id": "75b0bd2e-4de9-41ea-87a7-858b45161d87", "slug": "your-nordic-blue", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage/your-nordic-blue", "text": "Your Nordic blue eyes looked attentively at the paintings hanging on the walls. I felt stirrings of rebellion: a whole clash between your civilization and my barbarism. Civilization from which you suffer. Barbarism which for me is a rejuvenation.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Paul Gauguin", "slug": "paul-gauguin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin" }, "book": { "title": "The Writings Of A Savage", "slug": "the-writings-of-a-savage", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 105, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin#The_Writings_of_a_Savage_(1996)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:33" }, { "id": "38ebbaac-e2e2-4fe0-8b62-3cdde5121a39", "slug": "i-am-leaving", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage/i-am-leaving", "text": "I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization. I want only to do simple, very simple art, and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Paul Gauguin", "slug": "paul-gauguin", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin" }, "book": { "title": "The Writings Of A Savage", "slug": "the-writings-of-a-savage", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/paul-gauguin/the-writings-of-a-savage" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 48, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "art", "slug": "art", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin#The_Writings_of_a_Savage_(1996)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:33" }, { "id": "34f8833d-e6c3-4a52-8e7c-d9a8301f935f", "slug": "we-never-can", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rabindranath-tagore/sadhana/we-never-can", "text": "We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity. The first question and the last which it has to answer is, Whether and how far it recognises man more as a spirit than a machine? Whenever some ancient civilisation fell into decay and died, it was owing to causes which produced callousness of heart and led to the cheapening of man's worth; when either the state or some powerful group of men began to look upon the people as a mere instrument of their power; when, by compelling weaker races to slavery and trying to keep them down by every means, man struck at the foundation of his greatness, his own love of freedom and fair-play. Civilisation can never sustain itself upon cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone man is true can only be nourished by love and justice.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Rabindranath Tagore", "slug": "rabindranath-tagore", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rabindranath-tagore" }, "book": { "title": "Sadhana", "slug": "sadhana", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/rabindranath-tagore/sadhana" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "love", "slug": "love", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore#S%C4%81dhan%C4%81_:_The_Realisation_of_Life_(1916)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:32" }, { "id": "ec68db8d-4492-498f-854e-879eb81034d2", "slug": "civilization-rests-on-two", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies/the-cornish-trilogy/civilization-rests-on-two", "text": "Civilization rests on two things...the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robertson Davies", "slug": "robertson-davies", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies" }, "book": { "title": "The Cornish Trilogy", "slug": "the-cornish-trilogy", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies/the-cornish-trilogy" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "alcohol", "slug": "alcohol", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/alcohol" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cornish_Trilogy#The_Rebel_Angels", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:15" }, { "id": "897e4d6f-f9c0-4c4c-b2d6-632293aada65", "slug": "sick-cultures-show", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-a-heinlein/friday/sick-cultures-show", "text": "Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Robert A. Heinlein", "slug": "robert-a-heinlein", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-a-heinlein" }, "book": { "title": "Friday", "slug": "friday", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-a-heinlein/friday" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 242, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Friday_(1982)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:02" }, { "id": "a9d73f9a-b51d-4b5a-b6d0-4a2b92f635ae", "slug": "the-first-requisite", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sigmund-freud/civilization-and-its-discontents/the-first-requisite", "text": "The first requisite of civilization, therefore, is that of justice—that is, the assurance that a law once made will not be broken in favour of an individual.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Sigmund Freud", "slug": "sigmund-freud", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sigmund-freud" }, "book": { "title": "Civilization and its Discontents", "slug": "civilization-and-its-discontents", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sigmund-freud/civilization-and-its-discontents" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 81, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "justice", "slug": "justice", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud#Civilization_and_Its_Discontents_(1929)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:43:49" }, { "id": "5977d182-e251-4e6c-b788-b24ad0ac6a81", "slug": "beauty-has-no-obvious", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sigmund-freud/civilization-and-its-discontents/beauty-has-no-obvious", "text": "Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Sigmund Freud", "slug": "sigmund-freud", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sigmund-freud" }, "book": { "title": "Civilization and its Discontents", "slug": "civilization-and-its-discontents", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sigmund-freud/civilization-and-its-discontents" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 62, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "beauty", "slug": "beauty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beauty" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud#Civilization_and_Its_Discontents_(1929)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:43:49" }, { "id": "1382d4bf-f4c9-4793-9fb8-d05b17590b9c", "slug": "only-children-are", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/marune-alastor-933/only-children-are", "text": "“Only children are intolerant of conventions. They are indispensable to an organized civilization, like discipline to an army, or foundations to a building, or landmarks to a traveler. Without conventions civilization is a handful of water. An army without discipline is a mob. A building without foundations is rubble. A traveler without landmarks is lost.” Lorcas stated that he opposed not all convention, but only those which he found irksome and pointless.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jack Vance", "slug": "jack-vance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance" }, "book": { "title": "Marune: Alastor 933", "slug": "marune-alastor-933", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/marune-alastor-933" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 246, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "tradition", "slug": "tradition", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/tradition" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_Vance#Marune:_Alastor_933_(1975)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:43:02" }, { "id": "ff82956a-ddba-48cd-8e15-250c8932fd64", "slug": "humanity-is-old", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/the-killing-machine/humanity-is-old", "text": "“Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth—and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort....We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolute—is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.”", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jack Vance", "slug": "jack-vance", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance" }, "book": { "title": "The Killing Machine", "slug": "the-killing-machine", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/the-killing-machine" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 179, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "human nature", "slug": "human-nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_Vance#The_Killing_Machine_(1964)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:57" }, { "id": "7ec12aba-f7ec-469d-8985-140d7bb610a5", "slug": "speech-is-civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann/the-magic-mountain/speech-is-civilization", "text": "Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact — it is silence which isolates.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Thomas Mann", "slug": "thomas-mann", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann" }, "book": { "title": "The Magic Mountain", "slug": "the-magic-mountain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann/the-magic-mountain" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "conversation", "slug": "conversation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conversation" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "silence", "slug": "silence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/silence" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann#The_Magic_Mountain_(1924)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:16" }, { "id": "780dcf79-7b95-4530-a054-1d7de2299c6d", "slug": "writing-well-was", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann/the-magic-mountain/writing-well-was", "text": "Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word... The word was — civilization!", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Thomas Mann", "slug": "thomas-mann", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann" }, "book": { "title": "The Magic Mountain", "slug": "the-magic-mountain", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-mann/the-magic-mountain" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "morality", "slug": "morality", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality" }, { "name": "writing", "slug": "writing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/writing" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann#The_Magic_Mountain_(1924)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:16" }, { "id": "92770311-c5c1-4e2b-a705-cc89e0d00911", "slug": "with-this-as-its", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/friedrich-engels/the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state/with-this-as-its", "text": "With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single scurvy individual–here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Friedrich Engels", "slug": "friedrich-engels", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/friedrich-engels" }, "book": { "title": "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", "slug": "the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/friedrich-engels/the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "wealth", "slug": "wealth", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/wealth" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "greed", "slug": "greed", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/greed" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels#The_Origin_of_the_Family,_Private_Property_and_the_State_(1884)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:00" }, { "id": "adc0b3d3-f3aa-4fb5-ae91-da04abfad226", "slug": "the-order-and", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/the-order-and", "text": "The order and harmony of the Western world, its most famous achievement, and a laboratory in which structures of a complexity as yet unknown are being fashioned, demand the elimination of a prodigious mass of noxious by-products which now contaminate the globe. The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Claude Lévi-Strauss", "slug": "claude-levi-strauss", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss" }, "book": { "title": "Tristes Tropiques", "slug": "tristes-tropiques", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 38, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "ecology", "slug": "ecology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss#Tristes_Tropiques_(1955)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:57" }, { "id": "9d9ef7eb-7b6a-4675-bef8-fe2925ba2e51", "slug": "people-who-are", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/myth-and-meaning/people-who-are", "text": "People who are without writing have a fantastically precise knowledge of their environment and all their resources. All these things we have lost, but we did not lose them for nothing; we are now able to drive an automobile without being crushed at each moment, for example, or in the evening to turn on our television or radio. This implies a training of mental capacities which ‘primitive’ peoples don’t have because they don’t need them.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Claude Lévi-Strauss", "slug": "claude-levi-strauss", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss" }, "book": { "title": "Myth and Meaning", "slug": "myth-and-meaning", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/myth-and-meaning" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "knowledge", "slug": "knowledge", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/knowledge" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss#Myth_and_Meaning_(1978)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:57" }, { "id": "8be33018-82f8-45bf-b0c7-ecd044af5e03", "slug": "civilization-is-sterilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldous-huxley/brave-new-world/civilization-is-sterilization", "text": "Civilization is sterilization.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Aldous Huxley", "slug": "aldous-huxley", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldous-huxley" }, "book": { "title": "Brave New World", "slug": "brave-new-world", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldous-huxley/brave-new-world" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Chapter_7", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:35" }, { "id": "fd6c7522-d7ce-48e4-b7cd-99275d05d8dd", "slug": "so-now-its", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/burning-chrome/so-now-its", "text": "So now it's cargo cult time for the human race. We can pick things up out there that we might not stumble across in research in a thousand years...Charmian says that contact with \"superior\" civilizations is something you don't wish on your worst enemy.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "William Gibson", "slug": "william-gibson", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson" }, "book": { "title": "Burning Chrome", "slug": "burning-chrome", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-gibson/burning-chrome" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Burning_Chrome_(short_story_collection,_1986)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:09" }, { "id": "be71c7ec-8542-4679-8124-81f4486509be", "slug": "most-civilization-is-based", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/most-civilization-is-based", "text": "Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Frank Herbert", "slug": "frank-herbert", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert" }, "book": { "title": "God Emperor of Dune", "slug": "god-emperor-of-dune", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "cowardice", "slug": "cowardice", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/cowardice" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune#God_Emperor_of_Dune_(1981)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:53" }, { "id": "ad994f9e-6a61-4fdc-9ec2-4353b1dc2b7e", "slug": "what-you-of-the", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/children-of-dune/what-you-of-the", "text": "What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk giving his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate. This has been a failure of everything from religions to general staffs throughout history. General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations. As to religions, I recommend a rereading of Thomas Aquinas. As to you of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe! Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness — they cannot work and their civilization collapses.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Frank Herbert", "slug": "frank-herbert", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert" }, "book": { "title": "Children Of Dune", "slug": "children-of-dune", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/children-of-dune" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "loyalty", "slug": "loyalty", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/loyalty" }, { "name": "trade", "slug": "trade", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/trade" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune#Children_of_Dune_(1976)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:52" }, { "id": "c1a21321-5a68-4095-938c-bebd75e02966", "slug": "every-civilization-must", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/dune-messiah/every-civilization-must", "text": "Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Frank Herbert", "slug": "frank-herbert", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert" }, "book": { "title": "Dune Messiah", "slug": "dune-messiah", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/dune-messiah" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune#Dune_Messiah_(1969)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:51" }, { "id": "0f8d6d0f-f61b-4f97-b43d-7056477fffad", "slug": "long-exile-from", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/moby-dick/long-exile-from", "text": "Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Herman Melville", "slug": "herman-melville", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville" }, "book": { "title": "Moby-Dick", "slug": "moby-dick", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/moby-dick" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 303, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Of_Whales_in_Paint,_in_Teeth,_%26c._(57)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:40:41" }, { "id": "54ea2249-917c-402a-9e3c-9b2a4b8688d1", "slug": "the-savage-who", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education/the-savage-who", "text": "The savage, who has need of no one, and envies no one, neither knows nor seeks to know any other country but his own. If he requires more land for his subsistence he shuns inhabited places; he makes war upon the wild beasts and feeds on them. But for us, to whom civilised life has become a necessity, for us who must needs devour our fellow-creatures, self-interest prompts each one of us to frequent those districts where there are most people to be devoured. This is why we all flock to Rome, Paris, and London. Human flesh and blood are always cheapest in the capital cities. Thus we only know the great nations, which are just like one another.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jean Jacques Rousseau", "slug": "jean-jacques-rousseau", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau" }, "book": { "title": "Emile; or On Education", "slug": "emile-or-on-education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" }, { "name": "cities", "slug": "cities", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/cities" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education#Book_V", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:38" }, { "id": "64cd003a-0c71-4a45-ad78-c81bda31fd4c", "slug": "life-is-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education/life-is-not", "text": "life is not breath, but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, every part of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Life consists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living. A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all. He would have fared better had he died young. Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control, constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jean Jacques Rousseau", "slug": "jean-jacques-rousseau", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau" }, "book": { "title": "Emile; or On Education", "slug": "emile-or-on-education", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "life", "slug": "life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life" }, { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education#Book_I", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:31" }, { "id": "de6e2664-f12f-45da-838d-7d16bdbcebae", "slug": "yes-yes-i-see", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno/tragic-sense-of-life/yes-yes-i-see", "text": "Yes, yes, I see it all! — an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist — for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Miguel de Unamuno", "slug": "miguel-de-unamuno", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno" }, "book": { "title": "Tragic Sense of Life", "slug": "tragic-sense-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/miguel-de-unamuno/tragic-sense-of-life" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "science", "slug": "science", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science" }, { "name": "meaning of life", "slug": "meaning-of-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/meaning-of-life" }, { "name": "civilization", "slug": "civilization", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/civilization" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Unamuno#I_:_The_Man_of_Flesh_and_Bone", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:39:20" } ] }