The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.

My play is the ultimate expression of my feeling of the twilight of Western civilization.

Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education... no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery.

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.

The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture-it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization.

Give me civilization. I don't want to be pampered.

There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to its early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization.

What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority.