Do the people of the world not yet realize that by fighting on until the bitter end I am not only performing my sacred duty to my people, but standing guard in the last citadel of collective security? Are they too blind to see that I have my responsibilities to the whole of humanity to face? I must still hold on until my tardy allies appear. And if they never come, then I say prophetically and without bitterness: The West will perish.

Puerto Rican writer, Cauce sin rio Under every social skin there lurks some barbarism.

A good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops-no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The test of civilization is the estimate of woman.

Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind.

Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants.

The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.