Civility Society Quotes & Sayings

What do I believe in? Imagination, gardens, science, poetry, love, and a variety of nonviolent consolations. I suspect that in this aggregate all this isn't enough, but that's where I am for now. — Teju Cole

The need for civility in society has never been more important. The foundation of kindness and civility begins in our homes. It is not surprising that our public discourse has declined in equal measure with the breakdown of the family. The family is the foundation for love and for maintaining spirituality. The family promotes an atmosphere where religious observance can flourish. There is indeed beauty all around when there's love at home. — Quentin L. Cook

Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Patience is no small, fell-good personal quality. It is at the heart of diplomacy and civility, lawfulness and civil order. Without it, people can't work together and society can't function at all. With it, we create the possibility of peace between people and between nations. — M.J. Ryan

The absence of trust is clearly inimical to a well-run society. The great Jane Jacobs noted as much with respect to the very practical business of urban life and the maintenance of cleanliness and civility on city streets. If we don't trust each other, our towns will look horrible and be nasty places to live. Moreover, she observed, you cannot institutionalize trust. Once corroded, it is virtually impossible to restore. — Tony Judt

Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible. — Janice Rogers Brown

The vegan believes that if we are to be true emancipators of animals we must renounce absolutely our traditional and conceited attitude that we have the right to use them to serve our needs. We must supply these needs by other means ... If the vegan ideal of non-exploitation were generally adopted, it would be the greatest peaceful revolution ever known, abolishing vast industries and establishing new ones in the better interests of men and animals alike. — Donald Watson

Then what's the point of trying if you can't even win?"
"You win in lots of different ways," Asher said. "Lots of little wins. The point of this life is not to be good all the time. It's to be as good as you can. No one is perfect. No one does it right all the time. That's not what life is. — Cate Tiernan

Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable [ ... ]. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on a such footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? — Jane Austen

A society that is controlled by an elite minority group who use the population as a food source, will never know civility — Alejandro C. Estrada

Civility means a great deal more than just being nice to one another. It is complex and encompasses learning how to connect successfully and live well with others, developing thoughtfulness, and fostering effective self-expression and communication. Civility includes courtesy, politeness, mutual respect, fairness, good manners, as well as a matter of good health. Taking an active interest in the well-being of our community and concern for the health of our society is also involved in civility. — P. M. Forni

Democracy requires us to recognize others' rights even when we fundamentally disagree with them. It requires a civility in which I respect a person's ultimate worth and seek to persuade but not to coerce. For this reason modern democracy grew out of Christian soil. We must exercise the skill of ethical surgeons in deciding which moral principles apply to society at large and how best to apply them. — Philip Yancey

Women's status in society has become the standard by which humanity's progress toward civility and peace can be measured."-Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images — Mahnaz Afkhami

Democracy is a continuous, open process of civility.
A democracy can never be "done"; updating democracy can never be over.

Democracy can be nothing else but a continuous process, because we use it to organize our life, and life is nothing but a continuous process.

Democracy can be compared to an operating system or an anti-virus software; if it does not get perpetually updated, it becomes obsolete very fast.

Trusting the updates or the "improvements" of democracy to the elected and the owned mass media is like trusting the updates of an anti-virus program to virus creators; it defeats the purpose of updates or improvements. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

Marriage is treated by all civilized societies as a peculiar and favored contract. It is in its origin a contract of natural law ... It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic. — Joseph Story

I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers - making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests? — Alexander McCall Smith

You ultimately judge the civility of a society not by how it treats the rich, the powerful, the protected and the highly esteemed, but by how it treats the poor, the disfavored and the disadvantaged ... — Bryan Stevenson

As we move into the twenty-first century, women's status in society will become the standard by which to measure our progress toward civility and peace. — Mahnaz Afkhami

The first rule of etiquette a boy learns when he's about to enter
society is that civility is due to all women. No provocation, no
matter how unjust and rudely delivered, can validate a man who fails
to treat a woman with anything less than utmost courtesy."
The boys hung on his every word. He glanced in her direction.
"I have met some incredibly unpleasant women, and I have never failed
in this duty. But I must admit: your sister may prove my undoing. — Ilona Andrews

Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated. — Eli Roth

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government ... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well — Charles W. Colson

Margaret opened the door and went in with the straight, fearless, dignified presence habitual to her. She felt no awkwardness; she had too much of society for that. Here was a person come on business to her father; and, as she was one who had shown himself obliging, she was disposed to treat him with full measure of civility. Mr. Thornton was a good deal more surprised and discomfited than she. Instead of a quiet, middle-aged clergyman, a young lady came forward with frank dignity,-a young lady of a different type to most of those he was in the habit of seeing. ( ... ) He had heard that Mr. Hale had a daughter, but he had imagined that she was a little girl. — Elizabeth Gaskell

A classical liberal is someone who wants a society that maximizes peace, civility, tolerance, and well-being for everyone. One that opens opportunities for everyone to advance themselves. — Charles Koch

If I ever over hear people saying I give off an 'Ed Harris type of sexy vibe.' I'll be pretty psyched. — Jonah Hill

People of very different opinions
friends who can discuss politics, religion, and sex with perfect civility
are often reduced to red-faced rage when the topic of conversation is the serial comma or an expression like more unique. People who merely roll their eyes at hate crimes feel compelled to write jeremiads on declining standards when a newspaper uses the wrong form of its. Challenge my most cherished beliefs about the place of humankind in God's creation, and while I may not agree with you, I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. But dangle a participle in my presence, and I'll consider you a subliterate cretin no longer worth listening to, a menace to decent society who should be removed from the gene pool before you do any more damage. — Jack Lynch

(Some people regard the astonishing collapse of manners and civility in our society as a superficial event. They are wrong. The fate of decorum expresses the fate of a culture's dignity, its attitude toward its animating values.) — Roger Kimball

. . . the authors had developed indices that could be employed to measure the state of a civilization, to determine if society was healthy, in decline, or perhaps even dead. The indicators keyed in on everything from the accumulation of refuse to declines in everyday civility. They looked at how a society treated its most vulnerable citizens; examined a culture's architecture, gauging its scale in relation to humans and the surrounding natural world. One of the primary indicators, however, was a measure of the ability of a society's citizens to listen to each other and truly hear what was being said. It evaluated by gradations the ability of individuals to stand motionless for prolonged periods, receptive to their surroundings. — Robert H. Lieberman

Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We need to create a society in which civility rules over cynicism and apathy. — Antanas Mockus

I guess I would call my music 'blues punk.' There's a lot of influences. — Benjamin Booker

[D]espite the patina of civility coating most of modern society, underneath it is a thick layer of savagery. — Gene Doucette