Victor Hugo Civilization Quotations

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.

We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.

The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.

Revolution is the larva of civilization.

Civilization survives on the constant discovery of amity and an equal supply of damnation.

A republic may be called the climate of civilization.

I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party Revolution-Civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World.

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.