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. . . CIVILITY [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: BEHAVIOR BREEDING CHEERFULNESS CONDUCT COOPERATION COURTESY GENTLEMEN GRACE HOSPITALITY KINDNESS MANNERS NICE POLITE REFINED RESPECT TACT Be nice to people on your way up because you might meet 'em on your way down. --usually attributed to either Jimmy Durante [James Francis Durante] (18931980), American comedian, or Wilson Mizner (18761933), American playwright. The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. "Considerations by the Way" in _The Conduct of Life_ [1860]. Be civil to all, sociable to many, familiar with few, friend to one, enemy to none. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. Quoted in _The Prefaces, Proverbs, and Poems of Benjamin Franklin_ [1889]. Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how 'pure' their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best. --Robert Heinlein (19071988) American science-fiction writer. _Time Enough for Love_ [1973] "Notebooks of Lazarus Long" Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. Compaρνa de Tobacos v. Collector, 275 U.S. [1904] Talking is one of the fine arts the noblest, the most important, the most difficult and its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894) American physician, poet, and essayist. _The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_ [1858] - Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In "The Rambler" (English journal), #50 [8 September 1750]. When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In "The Rambler" (English journal), #55 [25 September 1750]. - Civil society depends on people agreeing to two things: Don't deliberately give offense to others, and don't be too easily offended. Too few people are giving any thought to either. --attributed to Karl Lembke If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch indeed who will not give them to him. --Louis XIV (16381715) King of France (16431715) Quoted in William Seward _Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_ [vol. IV, 5th ed., 1804]. Civility costs nothing, and buys everything. --Lady Mary Wortley Montagu [nιe Pierrepont] (16891762) English aristocrat and writer. Letter to Mary, Countess of Bute [30 May 1756]. Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used. --Blaise Pascal (16231662) French mathematician, physicist, and moralist. Attributed in American Unitarian Association _Day Unto Day_ [5th ed. 1873]. That character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _Thoughts on Various Subjects_ [1727] To be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path. --Agnes Repplier (18551950) American author. _Americans and Others_ [1912] " A Question of Politeness" Better a false 'Good morning' than a sincere 'Go to Hell.' --Yiddish proverb ----- decorous (adj.) Not offensive in behavior, manners, appearance, or the like; proper; well-behaved. Syn.: proper, decent, mannerly Related: genteel, acceptable, fitting, civil, appropriate, tasteful, prim, respectable, modest, polite, refined, Derived: decorously, adv. ; decorousness, n. ![]() ![]() CIVILIZATION . . see: "RULES" see: "THE HUMAN RACE" for other related links The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force. --George Bancroft (18001891) American historian and public official. Speech to the Adelphi Society, Liamstown College [August 1835]. New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it. --Saul Bellow (19152005) Canadian-born American novelist. _Mr. Sammler's Planet_, pt. 6 [1970] Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members. --Pearl S. Buck (18921973) American author noted for her novels of life in China; winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature. _My Several Worlds_ [1954] [T]he greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity. The effect of the whole situation is barbarizing. --Herbert Butterfield (19001979) British historian and religious thinker. _Christianity, Diplomacy and War_, p. 43 [1953] The three great elements of modern civilization, Gunpowder, Printing, and the Protestant Religion. --Thomas Carlyle (17951881) Scottish historian and political philosopher. _Essays_ "The State of German Literature" [1838] - The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition, are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. --Cyril Connolly (19031974) English writer. _The Unquiet Grave_ [1944] The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this the uncivilized have not forgiven them. --Cyril Connolly (19031974) English writer. _The Unquiet Grave_ [1944] - The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky (18211881) Russian novelist, journalist, and short story writer. _The House of the Dead_ [1862] , tr. Constance Garnett [1957] - A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars. --Will Durant (18851981) American philosopher and writer. _Caesar and Christ_, epilogue [The Story of Civilization Vol 3] [1944] Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. --Will Durant (18851981) American philosopher and writer. Quoted in Herbert Prochnow _The Complete Toastmaster: A New Treasury for Speakers_ [1960]. Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again. --Will [William James] Durant (18851981) & Ariel Durant (18981981) American husband and wife writing collaborators. _The Lessons of History_, p. 101 [1968] - [When asked what he thought of Western civilization:] I think it would be a good idea. --Mohandas K. Gandhi (18691948) Indian statesman and leader of the nationalistic movement against British rule. Attributed in "Reader's Digest" [1967]. The West is overwhelmingly dominant now and will remain number one in terms of power and influence well into the twenty-first century. Gradual, inexorable, and fundamental changes, however, are also occurring in the balances of power among civilizations, and the power of the West relative to that of other civilizations will continue to decline. ... The most significant increases in power are accruing and will continue to accrue to Asian civilizations, with China gradually emerging as the society most likely to challenge the West for global influence. These shifts in power among civilizations are leading and will lead to the revival and increased cultural assertiveness of non-Western societies and to their increasing rejection of Western culture. --Samuel Huntington (19272008) American political scientist. _The Clash of Civilizations_, pp.82-3 [1996] If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. Letter to Colonel Charles Yancy [6 January 1816]. A decent provision for the poor, is the true test of civilization. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ "26 October 1769" [1791]. In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke. --Sφren Kierkegaard (18131855) Danish philosopher. "Diapsalmata" in _Either/Or_ [1843]. It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both. It is crucially important that we on our side should not be pushed into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival. --Bernard Lewis (b. 1916) British-born American professor and Middle-Eastern scholar. "The Roots of Muslim Rage" in _Atlantic Monthly_ [September 1990]. A sentimental misanthropist coined the often cited aphorism "The more I see of human beings, the more I like animals". I maintain the contrary: only the person who knows animals, including the highest and most nearly related to ourselves, and who has gained insight into evolution, will be able to apprehend the unique position of man. We are the highest achievement reached so far by the great constructors of evolution. We are their 'latest' but certainly not their last word. The scientist must not regard anything as absolute, not even the laws of pure reason. He must remain aware of the great fact, discovered by Heraclitus, that nothing whatever really remains the same even for one moment, but that everything is perpetually changing. To regard man, the most ephemeral and rapidly evolving of all species, as the final and unsurpassable achievement of creation, especially at his present-day particularly dangerous and disagreeable stage of development, is certainly the most arrogant and dangerous of all untenable doctrines. If I thought of man as the final image of God, I should not know what to think of God. But when I consider that our ancestors, at a time fairly recent in relation to the earth's history, were perfectly ordinary apes, closely related to chimpanzees, I see a glimmer of hope. It does not require very great optimism to assume that from us human beings something better and higher may evolve. Far from seeing in man the irrevocable and unsurpassable image of God, I assert more modestly and, I believe, in greater awe of the Creation and its infinite possibilities that the long-sought missing link between animals and the really humane being is ourselves! --Konrad Lorenz (19031989) Austrian zoologist. "On the Virtue of Scientific Humility", ch. 12 in _On Aggression_ [1963]. Men become civilized not in proportion to their willingness to believe but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. "What I Believe" in Henry Goddard Leach (ed.) _Forum and Century, vol. 84 [1930]. [T]here are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war. --Reinhold Niebuhr (18921971) American theologian. "Christianity and Crisis" (Journal pub. 1941-1993) [10 February 1941] I believe that Western civilization, after some disgusting glitches, has become almost civilized. I believe it is our first duty to protect that civilization. I believe it is our second duty to improve it. I believe it is our third duty to extend it if we can. But let's be careful about that last point. Not everybody is ready to be civilized. I wasn't in 1969. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Give War A Chance_ [1992] If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts. --Camille Paglia (b. 1947) American writer and social critic. _Sexual Personae_, ch. I [1990] Any comfortable American who is cynical of progress or the competent decency of modern civilization hasn't pondered how life was for our ancestors. Any day that cossacks haven't burned your home should start out a happy one, overflowing with optimism. --M.N. Plano, quoted by David Brin, keynote address delivered to the Libertarian Party National Convention in Indianapolis [5 July 2002]. You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. In "New York Times" [23 December 1929]. The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, 'This is mine,' and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. --Jean Jacques Rousseau (17121778) French philosopher and novelist. _Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind_ [1761] To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn (19182008) Russian novelist. Quoted in Benjamin Hart _Faith & Freedom: The Christian Roots of American Liberty_ [1988]. When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized. --Elwin Charles Stakman (18851979) American plant pathologist and educator. Quoted in "Technocracy Digest" [1950]. Civilizations die from suicide, not murder. --attributed to Arnold Toynbee (18891975) English historian. - When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. --Daniel Webster (17821852) American orator and politician. Remarks on the Agriculture of England at the Boston, Mass. State House [13 January 1840]. If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends. --Orson Welles (19151985) American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. In a conversation with David Frost as quoted in Joseph McBride _Orson Welles: Actor and Director_ [1977]. The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. "The Road Away From Revolution" in _The Atlantic Monthly_ [August 1923]. ----- anomie or anomy (noun) 1: a breakdown or lack of values, norms, or structure in a society. 2: the alienated feeling of an individual or class resulting from such a breakdown. Derived: anomic (adj.) ![]() ![]() CIVIL RIGHTS . . see: "LYNCHING" see: "FREEDOM" for other related links They [the makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. --Louis Brandeis (18561941) American lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [19161939]. In a dissenting Supreme Court opinion "Olnstead v. United States" [1928]. Black power! --Stokely Carmichael (19411998) American civil-rights activist. Remarks at rally [16 June 1966]. If the is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. In a dissenting Supreme Court opinion "United States v. Schwimmer" [1929]. Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through these gates. --Lyndon B. Johnson (19081973) American Democratic statesman, President [19631969]. Commencement Address at Howard University, Washington, D.C. [4 June 1965]. - I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! --Martin Luther King, Jr. (19291968) American civil rights leader. Keynote address at the Civil Rights March at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington [28 August 1963]. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, and when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! --Martin Luther King, Jr. (19291968) American civil rights leader. Speech at Civil Rights March, Washington, D.C. [28 August 1963]. - - [On her refusal to give up her seat to a white man:] All I was doing was trying to get home from work. --Rosa Parks (19132005) Figure in the American civil rights movement. Quoted in "Time" [15 December 1975]. I had no idea when I refused to give up my seat on that Montgomery bus that my small action would help put an end to the segregation laws in the south. I only knew I was tired of being pushed around. I was a regular person, just as good as anybody else. There had been a few times in my life when I was treated by white people like a regular person, so I knew what that felt like. It was time. It was time that other white people started treating me that way. --Rosa Parks (19132005) Figure in the American civil rights movement. _Rosa Parks: My Story_ [1992] - In one generation we have moved from denying a black man service at a lunch counter to elevating one to the highest military office in the nation, and to being a serious contender for the presidency. This is a magnificent country and I am proud to be one of its sons. --Colin L. Powell (b. 1937) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [19891993] and Secretary of State [20012005]. At a news conference in Alexandria, VA, where he announced his decision not to seek the presidential nomination [8 November 1995]. end page | CALAMITIES - CALM | CALUMNY - CANADA | CANCER - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT | CAPITALISM | CAREFREE - CARPE DIEM | CARTER (JIMMY) - CATS & DOGS | CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - CENSORSHIP | CERTAINTY - CHANGE | CHANGING (ONE'S MIND) & CHANGING TIMES | CHARACTER | CHARACTER ASSASINATION - CHEERFULNESS | CHEER UP! - CHILDHOOD | CHILDREN | CHILDREN'S RHYME | CHINA | CHOCOLATE - CHRISTIANITY | CHRISTMAS | CHURCH - CIGARS | CIRCUMSTANCES & CITIES | CIVILITY - CIVIL RIGHTS | CLARITY - CLEVER | CLOTHES - COFFEE | COLD - COLORS | COMEDY | COMFORT - COMMON SENSE | COMMUNICATION | COMMUNISM | COMPANIONSHIP - COMPASSION | COMPETITION - COMPLIMENTS | COMPOSERS - CONDUCTORS | CONFESSION - CONQUEST | CONSCIENCE - CONTENTED | CONTEXT - CONVERSATION | CONVICTION & COOKING | COOLIDGE - CORPORATIONS | CORRUPTION - COURAGE | COURT - COWS | CREATIVITY - CRIME | CRIME & PUNISHMENT - CROOKS | CRITICISM & CRITICS | CROWD (THE) - CUBA | CULTURE - CYNICS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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