Civilized Society Quotes

A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

To inflict cruelties on defenceless creatures, or condone such acts, is to abuse one of the cardinal tenets of a civilized society – reverence for life.

There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America’s death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society.

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.

No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.

As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.

Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.

Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

I think that the essence of a free and civilized society is that everything in it should be subject to criticism, that all forms of authority, should be treated with a certain reservation.

Democratic socialism means, that in a democratic, civilized society, the wealthiest people and the largest corporations must pay their fair share of taxes.

In general, hateful speech and opinions are protected under the Constitution, except to the extent they are deemed to incite violence or otherwise become illegal. But, at the same time, civilized society tends to frown upon it.

It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.

If pro-abortionists want to commit intellectual suicide and deny scientific facts, that’s their problem. But there’s no reason a civilized society should fund their anti-scientific outlook – or accept its inhumane consequences.

Therefore, to teach them [women] at least an outline of economics and law is the first requirement after giving them a general education. Figuratively speaking, it will be like providing the women of civilized society with a pocket dagger for self-protection.

Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.

I am for a system of universal health care where every American has health care as a fundamental right because I think that’s where we should be as a civilized society.

A generous basic state pension is the least a civilized society should offer those who have worked hard and saved through their whole lives.

In any civilized society the most important task is achieving a proper balance between freedom and order. In wartime, reason and history both suggest that this balance shifts in favor… of the government’s ability to deal with conditions that threaten the national well-being.

Thousands of years ago the question was asked: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people.

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society

Civilized people can talk about anything. For them no subject is taboo…. In civilized societies there will be no intellectual bogeys at sight of which great grownup babies are expected to hide their eyes.

Libel actions, when we look at them in perspective, are an ornament of a civilized society. They have replaced, after all, at least in most cases, a resort to weapons in defense of a reputation.

No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.

I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women’s roles are growing in power all of the time.

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.

Libel actions, when we look at them in perspective, are an ornament of a civilized society. They have replaced, after all, at least in most cases, a resort to weapons in defense of a reputation.

Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.

The world order which we seek is the co-operation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

Nature is rarely allowed to enter the sacred portals of civilized society.

We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of #‎ libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.

Poverty is the openmouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough.

Speak out, educate, do not be intimidated by the apologists, and do not let extreme racism be mainstreamed. Hopefully there will come a time when we don’t need to tell our kids that Halloween is no excuse for hate, and that blackface has no place in a civilized society.

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

When we learn to read, it’s a real product of civilization and a civilized society. It affects your brain. It affects the way you think, and it gives you that capacity for self-reflection that you simply do not have without the agency of books.

Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That’s where it will be.

If we are to produce a more civilized society, a more just society, it has to be based on the truth.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

The rule of law is crucial to a civilized society – so we should go out of our way to uphold and strengthen it to the extent possible.

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society.В The higher the tax level, the greater the failure.

The American people expect the United States to keep terrorists where they belong, apart from civilized society and outside of America’s borders

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.

At least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone’s phone conversation without a warrant issued by court. That’s more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism.

The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes. Man’s ultimate responsibility is to God alone.

Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.

There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.

The highest hallmark of a civilized society is not the rapidity by which it exacts vengeance, but its ability to hold victim and victimizer in its compassionate heart.

Virtually every civilized society today holds sacred the right to peaceably bury their dead.

War is part of our history, but it is not in at all the same sense part of our prehistory. It is one of the innovations that occurred between nine and eleven thousand years ago when the first civilized societies were coming into being. What has been invented can be changed; war is not in our genes.

In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.

There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.

Redemption is possible, and it is the measure of a civilized society.

These are the now-endangered markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers safety and compensation laws, pure foods and safe drugs, Social Security, Medicare and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels.

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

Marriage is treated by all civilized societies as a peculiar and favored contract. It is in its origin a contract of natural law . . . . It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic.

There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization.

Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized society.

Art is a necessity – an essential part of our enlightenment process. We cannot, as a civilized society, regard ourselves as being enlightened without the arts.

In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food.

That country [Carthage] was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from whence it had been raised by the Phoenician colonies and Roman laws; and every step of intestine discord was marked by some deplorable victory of savage man over civilized society.

The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.