No one can predict the future exactly, but we know two things: It’s going to be different, and it must be rooted in today’s world.

But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.

Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph

Civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark.

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.

The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.

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.

Malibu: With sounds of waves crashing, and the ocean at the doorstep, you feel like you are hours away from civilization. And with L.A. traffic, YOU ARE.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Our political system is now run by the Big People for their own interests. If they ever deign to notice the Little People, it is with disdain and contempt.

All civilizations at some time have fallen into this total terror, when the mystery of life was a kind of panic only to be assuaged by the spilling of blood.

A call to embrace democracy is the worst insult to a society that is still alien to civilisation. It is like being asked to dance to the tune of mob justice.

...the/ supreme end-result of/ early Gothic phallic forms/ is the skyscraper & the/ oil drill & powered/ compressor & pistons of/ great engines...