Fertility of the soil is the future of civilization..

Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of th….

It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross ….

In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion..

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be..

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level.

True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin..

The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions..

Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our si….

The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its leisure..

Freedom is neither a legal invention nor a philosophical conquest, the cherished possession of civilizations more valid than others because they alon….

Apart from God nothing matters. We think that health matters, that freedom matters, or knowledge or art or civilization. And but for one insistent wo….

Our civilization depends largely on paper..

Feminists are in an untenable position, defending something they no longer believe in, and which history will force them to recognize was destructive….

All civilizations at some time have fallen into this total terror, when the mystery of life was a kind of panic only to be assuaged by the spilling o….

I think of myself as a kind of reporter; I report on the nature of certain events. I think of art as a report on civilization at a certain time..

Change no man’s religion, change no man’s politics, interrupt the sovereignty of no nation. Instead, teach Man to use what he has and what he knows t….

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

Most of the scientists I know think civilization is teetering on the brink of a global disaster. They just don't know when it's going to hit. I don't….

If education is beaten by training, civilization dies..

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vil….