It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
Hunter S. Thompson

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.
Ayn Rand

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.
Ayn Rand

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.
Karl Marx

When humor goes, there goes civilization.
Erma Bombeck

I think God's going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.
Steven Wright

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.
Helen Keller

For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.
Robert A. Heinlein

So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.
William Morris

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
Herbert Spencer

You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
Will Rogers

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
Will Rogers

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.
Carl Sagan

Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.
Bill Cosby

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
Milton Friedman

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
Milton Friedman

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.
Richard Bach

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.
Gertrude Stein

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce