Mark Twain Quotes

Civilization and religion do not necessarily move with equal pace.

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?

The people of Iran have been battling against consecutive conflicts between tradition and modernity for over 100 years... some have tried and are trying to see the world through the eyes of their predecessors and to deal with the problems and difficulties of the existing world by virtue of the values of the ancients... many others...seek to go forth in step with world developments and not lag behind the caravan of civilization, development and progress.

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.

The civilized world is far ahead of us. We have no choice but to catch up.

Advancing waves of other people’s progress sweep over the unchanging man and wash him out.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

All civilizations must go through four stages: The first stage is the emergence of a new civilization and society. The second stage covers a period of growth and prosperity. Stagnation and decadence characterize the third stage where wealth can no longer increase. This brings us to a fourth stage of decline leading to the ultimate collapse. Finally, a new civilization emerges from the ashes of the previous one and another cycle is born. The conditions of the world, and of the nations do not persist in one unchanging state but are transformed with the passage of time and move from one condition to another

It was necessary to abolish the fez, which sat on the heads of our nation as an emblem of ignorance, negligence, fanaticism, and hatred of progress and civilization …

Civilizations are a matter of the mind.

No community ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called civilization

The true test of the progress of a people is to be found in their literature.

With highly civilized nations, continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection.

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

Civilization is not a spontaneous generation with any race or nation known to history, but the torch to be handed down from race to race from age to age.

Civilization cannot go back; civilization must not stand still. We have undertaken new methods. It is our task to perfect, to improve, to alter when necessary, but in all cases to go forward. To consolidate what we are doing, to make our economic and social structure capable of dealing with modern life, is the joint task of the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branches of the National Government.

A certain degree of progress from the rudest state in which man is found,—a dweller in caves, or on trees, like an ape, a cannibal, an eater of pounded snails, worms, and offal,—a certain degree of progress from this extreme is called Civilization.

The technical progress of the last half-century has transformed our country in countless ways. But, fortunately, we have continued to keep our own customs and culture. It is up to us now, more than ever, in shaping our new country, to achieve a consolidation, in which neither the rapid progress of recent years, nor the age-old customs of our forefathers, are lost or diminished, but rather fused into a new national characteristic in which the best is preserved, while the worst may be thrown away.

Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counterrevolutionaries and advocates of the status quo.

Commerce is the great civilizer.

Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.

All that is great in man comes through work; and civilization is its product.

There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.