L'amour, heurtant son front aveugle a'   tous les obstacles de la civilisation. Love, knocking its blind forehead against all of civilization's obstacles.

-Samuelson, Sir Sydney
  Indiana, preface.

But reading is not idleness†it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.

-Spender, Sir Stephen Harold
  Journal entry, 4 Jan.

Men are the Brahmin, women the Pariahs, under our existing civilization.

-Stanton, Elizabeth ne¤  e  Cady
The History ofWoman Suffrage1848^61, vol.1, ch.1, 'Preceding Causes'.

The saddest object in civilization, and to my mind the greatest confession of its failure, is the man who can work, who wants work, and who is not allowed to work.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
Quoted by Lloyd Osbourne in'The Death of Stevenson', preface toTusitala edition of Weir of Hermiston (published1924).

Why, as civilization spreads, do outstanding men become fewer? Why, when attainments are the lot of all, do great intellectual talents become rarer? Why, when there are no longer lower classes, are there no longer upper classes? Why, when knowledge of how to rule reaches the masses, is there a lackof great abilities in the direction of society? America clearly poses these questions.But who can answer them?

-Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Cle¤  rel de
  Translated by George Lawrence. Quoted in J P Mayer (ed) Journey toAmerica (1960).

From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilizationworks its miracles and civilized man isturned almost into a savage.

-Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Cle¤  rel de
  Of Manchester. Journal entry, 2 Jul. Journeys to England and Ireland (translatedby George Lawrence andJPMayer,1958).

Ce serait diminuer leur importance que de croire qu'ils ne servent qu'a'   garantir la liberte¤  ; ils maintiennent la civilisation. It would diminish the importance [of newspapers] to believe that they only serve to guarantee freedom; they maintain civilization.

-Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Cle¤  rel de
^40  De la De¤  mocratie en Ame¤  rique (Democracy in America), vol.2, pt.2, ch.6.

   I am convinced that the history of so-called scientific work in our famous centers of European civilization will, in a couple of hundred years, represent an inexhaustible source of laughter and sorrow for future generations. The learned men of the small western part of our European continent lived for several centuries under the illusionthatthe eternal blessed life wastheWest'sfuture. They were interested in the problem of when and where this blessed life would come.But they never thought of how they were going to make their life better.

-Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich
  What is Art? (translated byV Tchertkoff).

Civilisation is a movement and not a condition; a voyage and not a harbour.

-Toynbee, Arnold Joseph
Quoted in Reader's Digest, Oct1958.

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life-blood of real civilisation.

-Trevelyan, George Macaulay
  English Social History.

Civilization has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in the long run onlychanged the form of the pack.

-Trotsky, Leon originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein
  History of the Russian Revolution (translated by Max Eastman,1934), vol.3, pt.3.

Women know the damnation of charity because the habit of civilisation has always been to throw them cheap alms rather than give them good wages.

-West, Dame Rebecca formerly  Cecily Isabel Fairfield
  'The Personal ServiceAssociation:Work for Idle Hands to Do', in The Clarion,13 Dec.