Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces our death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all experience - can tell us when to heal and when to kill.