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

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.

When humor goes there goes civilization.

The more the history of the World War and what led up to it is studied the more clearly those tragic years become revealed as a vast collapse of civilization.

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards.

If history could teach us anything it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

Classes struggle some classes triumph others are eliminated. Such is history such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.

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.