Because civilizations are finite, in the life of each of them there comes a moment when the center ceases to hold. What keeps them at such times from disintegration is not legions but language.

There is an ancient tradition of how to tie the topknot that gets passed down from parent to child. In my case, my mom taught me it. So this is a tradition, and not all Sikhs know it actually.

The clearer and deeper the public opinion of the world, in the first instance the opinion of the working masses, will understand the contradictions and the difficulties of the socialist development of an isolated country, the higher will it appreciate the results achieved. The less it identifies the fundamental methods of Socialism with the zigzags and errors of the Soviet bureaucracy, the less will be the danger that, by the inevitable revelation of these errors and of their consequences, the authority, not only of the present ruling group, but of the workers' State itself, may decline.

For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are sufficient - for this we have the testimony of the history of our revolution. For the definitive victory of Socialism, for the organization of Socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient - for that are required the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.

Despite all the achievements of civilisation, the human being is still one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth.

Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.

This is the tragedy of almost every civilization—that its soul is in its faith, and seldom survives philosophy.

It is not the race that makes the civilization, it is the civilization that makes the people: circumstances geographical, economic, and political create a culture, and the culture creates a human type.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

A man with a machine and inadequate culture is a pestilence.

You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.

There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.

I am unable to rouse much interest in any highly civilized race, country or epoch, including this one.

In the hill country, civilization steals in last, and the people retain much of the crude but vigorous mode of expression of the colonial days and earlier.

Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence - whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.

Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.

Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.