I worry about younger generations who were born to view their country trampling on humanity of everyone that comes in its way, as the 'normal state of affairs" - because they knew no other. We know how easy it is to shed, under such circumstances, the thin and frail veneer of civilization, not to mention the moral standards of which the Jews were presumed to be the world's teachers.
— Zygmunt Bauman
In China's thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today.
— Zhou Shengxian
Not a single piece of material culture - not a single object - has been found at Giza that can be interpreted to come from a lost civilization.
— Zahi Hawass
Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it.
— Zahi Hawass
We created a thing called culture and civilization, and now we're about to lose it because we're trying to destroy everything. And I kind of miss it. I miss culture and civilization.
— Yoko Ono
Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.
— Yehudi Menuhin
Without winners, there would be no civilization.
— Woody Hayes
Without winners, there wouldn't even be any civilization.
— Woody Hayes
The sum of the whole matter is this - our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually.
— Woodrow Wilson
Our civilization cannot survive materially unless it is redeemed spiritually. It can be saved only by becoming permeated with the Spirit of Christ, and being made free and happy by practices which spring out of that spirit. Only thus can discontent be driven out and all shadows lifted from the road ahead.
— Woodrow Wilson
It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.
— Woodrow Wilson
[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.
— Winifred Holtby
In the advance of civilization, it is new knowledge which paves the way, and the pavement is eternal.
— Willis R. Whitney
The last great struggle for our rights; the battle for our own civilization, is entirely with ourselves, and the problem is to be solved by us.
— William Wells Brown
I think mathematics is a vast territory. The outskirts of mathematics are the outskirts of mathematical civilization. There are certain subjects that people learn about and gather together. Then there is a sort of inevitable development in those fields. You get to the point where a certain theorem is bound to be proved, independent of any particular individual, because it is just in the path of development.
— William Thurston
I came home from Portugal convinced that nothing is so important as making known what the Mother of God asked in those apparitions of 1917 . . . The future of our civilization, our liberties, our very existence may depend upon the acceptance of her commands.
— William Thomas Walsh
Civilization is being poisoned by its own waste products.
— William Ralph Inge
Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal.
— William Ralph Inge
No healthy civilization can ever be reared on a foundation of devitalized work.
— William Ralph Inge
The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.
— William Ralph Inge
For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.
— William Pfaff
We have a system which, though far from perfect, is strong with idealism. It gives elbow room for men of all races and all beliefs. It is vital and dynamic. And it works. We have the means of shaping the world in our pattern. If we do, freedom will be assured for all men. The decision is in the hands of this generation. It is a challenge to our political competence. For Western civilization it is the greatest challenge of all time.
— William O. Douglas
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
Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
— William Morris
Patriotism is an indispensable weapon in the defense of civilization against barbarism.
— William Kristol
Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.
— William Jennings Bryan
You cannot force growth of human life and civilization, any more than you can force these slow-growing trees. That is the economy of Almighty God, that all good growth is slow growth.
— William Jay Gaynor
First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible.
— William J. Clinton
The Kyoto Treaty wasn't perfect, but we signed it, in fact, helped to draft it. And I'm very proud of it, it was the world's first commitment to doing something comprehensive on greenhouse gases and trying to reduce global warming before we do irreversible damage to many civilizations around the world.
— William J. Clinton
With the emergence of civilization, the rate of change shifted from hundreds of thousands of years to millennia. With the emergence of science as a way of knowing the universe, the rate of change shifted to centuries.
— William Irwin Thompson
I know this, and I know it from actual experience in the Orient, that the progress of modern Christian civilization has largely depended on the earnest hard work of the Christian missions of every denomination.
— William Howard Taft
Civilization is only a series of victories against nature.
— William Harvey
Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization.
— William H. Prescott
Unless we redesign our civilization in numerous ways, all of the science in the world won't save us.
— William H. Calvin
The yearning after equality [in economic outcome] is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to B; consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization.
— William Graham Sumner
The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.
— William Gilmore Simms
One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
— William Feather
Civilization begins with distillation
— William Faulkner
The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men to inflict suffering, and to retard the march of civilization.
— William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Vanity as an impulse has without doubt been of far more benefit to civilization than modesty has ever been.
— William E. Woodward