“Something told her to hide the feeling from Herb. That something, that damned something, was the sense of civilized dignity that is one of our most civilized attributes, the source of so many missed opportunities.”

“Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it. The hypothesis has certain facts to support it. As far as peace (which is one ingredient in our idea of civilization)is concerned, I think many would now agree that a foreign policy dominated by desire for peace is one of the many roads that lead to war.”

“Bit it was her scent that just about killed him. Clean skin. Woman. And something more—something that made him feel like dispensing with five thousand years of civilization, dragging her off to a cave somewhere, and filling her with babies.”

“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what's going on, but that there's something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.”

“It seemed so illogical to punish some poor criminal for doing something that civilization taught him how to do so he could have something that civilization taught him how to want. It seemed to him as wrong as if they had hung the gun that shot the man.”

“It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.”