Civilised Quotes

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
Bertrand Russell

Great, Men, Philosophy

The war on terror is the most insane and immoral war of all time. The Americans are doing what they did in Vietnam, bombing villages. But how can a civilised nation do this? How can you can eliminate suspects, their wives, their children, their families, their neighbours? How can you justify this?
Imran Khan

Time, War, Children

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.
Peter Ustinov

Music, Laughter, Sound

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilised folk to despise war.
Allan Massie

War, Young, Soldier

We would all love to walk up to someone and shoot them in the head, there's no doubt about that. We're too civilised to admit it, but we're happy to read about it.
Lee Child

Love, Happy, Someone

In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature.
James Payn

Literature, Later, Pretence

The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society.
Roy Jenkins

Society, Become, Dirty

Suicide is possible, but not probable; hanging, I trust, is even more unlikely; for I hope that, by the time I die, my countrymen will have become civilised enough to abolish capital punishment.
Laurence Housman

Trust, Time, Hope

In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
Thorstein Veblen

Life, Men, Beautiful

Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.
Alexander Skarsgard

Education, Health, Great

The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another.
Henry James Sumner Maine

Another, Far, Nation

I think the police are a major part of the glue that holds civilised life together. They're not highly paid.
Peter James

Life, Together, Police

As a civilised society, we have a duty to support those among us who are vulnerable and in need. When times are hard, that duty should be felt more than ever, not disappear or diminish.
Justin Welby

Society, Hard, Times

There is nothing more foreign to a civilised and democratic system than preventive detention.
Robert Bourassa

Nothing, System, Democratic

Going to a restaurant is one of my keenest pleasures. Meeting someplace with old and new friends, ordering wine, eating food, surrounded by strangers, I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
Adam Gopnik

Life, Food, Live

You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.
Bernard Pivot

Feeling, Language, Rules

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