Emile Zola Quotes

Civilization consists in the multiplication and refinement of human wants.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.

At the root of the Noble Savage myth is this basic truth: the savage is good, but he's also violent. This is why Rousseau propounded the need for contracts between the savage and society. The savage also shows that in order to understand the need for civilization and culture, mankind needs to see barbarism. One could not exist without the other.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

The only very marked difference between the average civilized man and the average savage is that the one is gilded and the other is painted.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. . . . The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.

We must, then, apply the principle of Doubt to Civilization; we must doubt its necessity, its excellence, and its permanence.

Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and ... absolutely nothing else.

Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Religion is civilization, the highest.

We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.

Were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged.

Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages much sooner than savages become civilized by means of religion and civil government.

Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. The instinct that preserves them teaches them to be flighty light, and false.

Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade.

Man is born barbarous--he is ransomed from the condition of beasts only by being cultivated.

The glossy surface of our civilization hides a real intellectual decadence.

We made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences.