Civilized Quotes

See also Core English Vocabulary (C) Quotes

I don`t particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. High Noon (1952) means a lot to me - I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing. I do not like John Wayne: I find it hard to watch him. I just never took to him. And I don`t like James Stewart as a cowboy. I love him, but just not as a cowboy; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) is one of my favorite films. I love Frank Capra. I love Preston Sturges. But we`re talking about westerns. ... I have always admired Clint Eastwood`s westerns. The spaghetti westerns were a great discovery. And Pale Rider (1985). As a child, the John Ford film _Cheyenne Autumn_ made a big impression on me. And _Five Easy Pieces_. It`s not really a western, but it is about the possibilities that can be found in the West. Jack Nicholson is sublime in that film, just sublime. It`s the most stultifying portrait of middle-class life. You want to flee from that world and head anywhere less civilized. Which is, of course, the appeal of the West: It`s not tamed yet.

- Daniel Day-Lewis

"(Valentino was) what is commonly called for want of a better name, a gentleman. In brief, Valentino`s agony was the agony of a man of relatively civilized feelings thrown into a situation of intolerable vulgarity." - H.L. Mencken

- Rudolph Valentino

"I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world."

- Peter Ustinov

The other day I was walking down the street in the rural town where we live (in France) and a truck hit me, rather hard, going fairly fast. And he starts to drive off, so I chase after him, reach in the window and grab his steering wheel. And I say, `Normally, in a civilized society, when we hit someone with a truck, we might inquire as to their well being.` So he said, `I`m sorry,` and I said, `Great. Try and be a little more careful and that would be fantastic, and so sorry to have troubled you.` I walk another 30 meters and he pulls up beside me a second time -- and asks me if he can have an autograph.

- John Malkovich

I don`t belong to a church or political party or a group of any kind. I feel that Amnesty International is the most civilized organization in history. Its currency is the written word. Its weapon is the letter; that`s why I am a member. I believe in its non-violence; I believe in its effectiveness. Its dignity and its sense of commitment. Its focus on individuals and the concentration and tenacity with which they defend those imprisoned for their ideas has earned it the cautious respect of repressive governments throughout the world.

- Sting

The subtlest comedy you can get right now is MASH (1970). They don`t want to see a picture unless Peter Fonda is running over a dozen people or unless Clint Eastwood has got a machine gun bigger then 140 penises. It gets bigger all the time, you know; it started out as a pistol and now it`s a machine gun. Something which is warm and funny and gentle and urbane and civilized hasn`t got a chance today. There is a lack of patience which is sweeping the nation - or the world, for that matter.

- Billy Wilder

(Washington, DC, April 3, 2007) Iraq is a very important part of securing the homeland, and it`s a very important part of helping change the Middle East into a part of the world that will not serve as a threat to the civilized world, to people like-or to the developed world, to people like-in the United States.

- George W. Bush

The more equality women have, the fairer, more civilized and tolerant society will be. Sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength.

- Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.

- Judith Martin

When your whole system, your whole civilized system goes down, this is pretty much what you get left with. We have no communications, no running water, no electricity, no real help.

- Kathleen Blanco

I know I`ve made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns. (1976)

- Richard Widmark

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

- Robert A. Heinlein

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

- Sally Quinn

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized.

- Suzanne Vega

But I never want to get to the point where I write a safe song or one that represents my sense of a subject in order to appear civilized.

- Suzanne Vega

Everyone town of 100,000 in the United States should have a Classical Theater supported by the town, or the state of the county, or the Federal Government, as they have in every civilized country.

- Tony Randall

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

- Mike Schmidt

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

- Nicholas Meyer

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

- Evelyn Waugh

Vengeance was a funny thing: You wanted the satisfaction of knowing it had occurred, but you never wanted to actually hear the words out loud, because then you`d have to admit to yourself that you`d wanted proof, and that somehow made you baser, less civilized.

- Jodi Picoult

Nobody minded what you did in bed or what you said about God, a very civilized attitude in 1948.

- Simon Raven

A person who does that to decent, civilized american citizens should be punished more severely.

- Chris Turner

I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.

- Daniel Defoe

Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world`s most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti.

- Thor Heyerdahl

A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn`t even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.

- Thor Heyerdahl

The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.

- Naguib Mahfouz

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be ``American`` before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?

- Edith Wharton

Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.

- Howard Zinn

Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There is a requirement to ensure the withdrawal takes place in a civilized manner. We will be able to show the world we deserve independence and freedom.

- Mahmoud Abbas

The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation.

- Abdolfattah Soltani

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

- Adam Clymer

The child`s true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy.

- Adam Moore

To have doubted one`s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

- Addison Phillips

Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

- Adina Rosenbaum

When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.

- Aftab Dada

And I think to be in NATO for the countries of our region, it means more guarantees for us, it means more responsibility for our common security, but it means fulfillment of all standards of civilized world, like protection of human rights and democratic mechanisms.

- Aileen Earnest

Civilized countries generally adopt gold or silver or both as money.

- AJ Hanson

Yet, upon the whole, the space I traversed is unlikely to become the haunt of civilized man, or will only become so in isolated spots, as a chain of connection to a more fertile country; if such a country exist to the westward.

- Alan Grieve

Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself.

- Alan Matsui

Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.

- Alan Stark

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

- Albert Low

To eradicate or modify or curb the tendencies which thus survive among civilized men is not a matter of intellectual conviction or training.

- Alberto Madrigal

The limitation upon this mode of promoting peace lies in the fact that it consists in an appeal to the civilized side of man, while war is the product of forces proceeding from man`s original savage nature.

- Alberto Madrigal

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.

- Alex Kindler

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

- Alexa Gromko

No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders.

- Alexis E. Fajardo

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

- Alfred Kugal

Although the political liberty of this country is greater than that of nearly every other civilized nation, its personal liberty is said to be less.

- Alfred Kugal

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

- Ali Partovi