Best 149 quotes in «civility quotes» category

If I had to name the biggest difference between Bhutan and the rest of the world, I could do it in one word, civility.

If people can be around each other doing co-human things—i.e., things that everyone does, such as eating food, helping others, creating, talking about the weather, etc.—and not feel threatened, anxieties are reduced, empathy is increased, trust is built, and perceptions are changed.

If someone is trying to share a laugh and you personally do not find it funny, then just move on and leave it alone. Do not steal someone else’s humor.

If the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the observation that we are all much more alike than we are unalike.

If the secret core of potlatch is the reciprocity of exchange, why is this reciprocity not asserted directly, why does it assume the “mystified” form of two consecutive acts each of which is staged as a free voluntary display of generosity? Here we encounter the paradoxes of forced choice, of freedom to do what is necessary, at its most elementary: I have to do freely what I am expected to do. (If, upon receiving a gift, I immediately return it to the giver, this direct circulation would amount to an extremely aggressive gesture of humiliation, it would signal that I refused the other’s gifts — recall those embarrassing moments when elderly people forget and give us last year’s present once again … ) …the reciprocity of exchange is in itself thoroughly ambiguous; at its most fundamental, it is destructive of the social bond, it is the logic of revenge, tit for tat. To cover this aspect of exchange, to make it benevolent and pacific, one has to pretend that each person’s gift is free and stands on its own. This brings us to potlatch as the “pre-economy of the economy,” its zero-level, that is, exchange as the reciprocal relation of two non-productive expenditures. If the gift belongs to Master and exchange to the Servant, potlatch is the paradoxical exchange between Masters. Potlach is simultaneously the zero-level of civility, the paradoxical point at which restrained civility and obscene consumption overlap, the point at which it is polite to behave impolitely.

If you are going to share something with a person, first look on their social media accounts and see how they have handled other people trust. If someone has shared the secrets of others, they will share yours.

In a world where we spend ever more of our time staring at screens, blocking out even our most intimate and proximate human contacts, public institutions with open-door policies compel us to pay close attention to people nearby. After all, places like libraries are saturated with strangers, people whose bodies are different, whose styles are different, who make different sounds, speak different languages, give off different, sometimes noxious, smells. Spending time in public social infrastructures requires learning to deal with these differences in a civil manner.

If you want friends you must be friendly. Always complaining and posting negative comments is not going to bring you friends. No one likes to get puked on.

Incivility is the social equivalent of CO2 and leads to a sort of cultural climate change that is very difficult to reverse. Anger, confusion, and a willingness to engage in bullying to get one's way; these are all results of the current hot house climate we find ourselves in.

In business, trust is crucial. As a society, we recognize that services may vary, as the same person may not provide the service each time, and therefore, there will be qualitative differences with each service. This variation of service and varying expectations without clear communication can lead to acts of incivility.

It is contrary to the usual practice of professional men to give their opinions upon each other's work unless regularly called upon in the way of their profession.

I reach into the abyss and find my manners.

It is not the job for those who are angry about the events of the day to strike out and post things that they hope will incite anger in others as well. Do not sell your social media friends short as far as their ability to find the news for themselves.

It is not enough just to be good. We must be good for something. We must contribute good to the world. The world must be a better place for our presence. And the good that is in us must be spread to others. This is the measure of our civility.

Many times, it’s a misunderstanding of what is promised or expected that causes acts of incivility.

It is rudeness of the highest order to hit a family when they are down.

It seems that the days of public modesty and concern about how we look are far from us. I will not say they are gone forever, in culture nothing is forever.

Posting something that is encouraging and well done compared to something that is trashy and common is the difference between eating a fine meal or the scraps from making that meal.

Nastiness devalues the speaker as well because the unwillingness to restrain the urge marks the speaker as less civilized, more animal-like.

Not everyone will support every mission or work, you can still enjoy their friendship. No one likes to feel that the only reason you are friends is what you can get out of them.

Only in this world of topsy-turvy attitudes could outright stupidity, such as I had displayed, be something that got me high marks. I had an amused glimmering of a notion at that point: If I ever turned out to be a complete and utter fool, I could wind up running the whole kingdom. It was something to consider.

People may get mad at the person they purchase the service from if the service does not meet their personal standard.

Positive people on the other had are not those who deny what is going on around them for some pie-in-the-sky type of thinking. Positive people are very award of the problems, disasters and difficulties that are happening all around them. What they do not do is give into defeat.

No matter who it is or what you think of them, never rejoice in the pain of others. It lowers you to a level you should not be at.

Okay, I cannot say this without being very direct. If you are looking for a spouse or even a romance through social media, you are looking for trouble.

Posting your thoughts on any social media site is like telling you most deeply held secret to the town gossip. Not a wise move.

Remember that people who seek to do evil can play hit and miss all they want. People who are seeking companionship online have to be right every time. Miss out on this one and the price could be very dear, even costing your life.

Remember this, posting pictures are like speaking words, you cannot take them back.

Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable [...]. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on a such footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?

Social media is just that - social.

Since the age of Socrates, social interaction has been continually scrutinized, leading to a constant change in guidelines and rules for social conduct. As a result, societal parameters do exist surrounding how society defines proper behaviors.

The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions.

Success-minded people know that first and foremost, in all we do, we must think of others first. By thinking of others, how they feel and what they need, will not cost you a thing nor will it lessen what you have to say.

Surely you would have expected no less of a Roma. We take what we want. If a Roma desires a woman, he steals her for himself. Sometimes right out of her bed.” Even in the darkness he could see the rich renewal of her blush. “You just said you would never hurt me.” “If I carried you away with me…” The idea of it, her soft, struggling weight in his arms, sent his blood surging. He was caught by the primitive appeal of it, all reason crushed beneath the thumping heat of desire. “The last thing on my mind would be hurting you.” “You would never do such a thing.” She was trying very hard to sound matter-of-fact. “We both know you’re too civilized.” “Do we? Believe me, the issue of my civility is entirely open to question.

. . . the authors had developed indices that could be employed to measure the state of a civilization, to determine if society was healthy, in decline, or perhaps even dead. The indicators keyed in on everything from the accumulation of refuse to declines in everyday civility. They looked at how a society treated its most vulnerable citizens; examined a culture's architecture, gauging its scale in relation to humans and the surrounding natural world. One of the primary indicators, however, was a measure of the ability of a society's citizens to listen to each other and truly hear what was being said. It evaluated by gradations the ability of individuals to stand motionless for prolonged periods, receptive to their surroundings.

So scope it out, and don’t shout it out!

Success-minded people must understand that the use of profane and obscene words have no place in their vocabulary.

The main point about civility is...the ability to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness against them and without pressing them to surrender it or to renounce some or all the traits that have made them strangers in the first place.

The Dandy is the highest form of existence attainable by the human form. His life is exclusively dedicated to dressing exquisitely, parading about the fashionable boroughs of splendid cities and and holding forth at his club, where he dispenses witticism as readily as the vulgaroisie utters its banal platitudes. The only species of 'work' this singular Chap might engage in would consist of discussing buttonhole stitching with his tailor and performing his ablutions until the morning has been well aired enough for him to step into it.

The great culture shapers today are the entertainment and marketing industries—from the shows we watch, to the music we listen to, to the lifestyle shaping advertisements. However, these industries are accountable to no one, except their shareholders.

The candor of a civilized mind comes from the ability to question self before action; the reverse is the case for the creative mind; act first, then question later.

The conversation soon turned upon fishing, and she heard Mr. Darcy invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often as he chose while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering at the same time to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing out those parts of the stream where there was usually most sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was walking arm in arm with Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of her wonder. Elizabeth said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme; and continually was she repeating, "Why is he so altered? From what can it proceed? It cannot be for me, it cannot be for my sake that his manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a change as this. It is impossible that he should still love me.

The missing link between humans and apes? It's certainly those brutes who haven't yet learned to respect privacy.

The system wears a mask of civility, yet will quickly reveal its true nature in the form of magnificently-purposed violence when needed.

The most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. Rather it is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems.

The need to revive civic education in our modern democracies is of the utmost importance to our future ability to preserve our democratic institutions and civil society. It is critical to preserving the equality of fundamental rights of all people. It is critical to developing the capacity for effective action to address the many complex social, political, economic, and environmental challenges arrayed before us. It is critical if we are going to successfully navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution and ensure it truly results in positive disruptions that work in the interests of the people by democratizing social, financial, and political edifices -- rather than simply intensifying the concentration of wealth, power, and influence.

The rules from those who are politically correct restrict what you can say to or about anything in our daily life. They tell you what to call others and what others can call you.

Trust is a factor in all communications, and civility reflects a respect for our differences.

They had made everything she took for granted redundant, like cooperation and manners and civility and privacy and laws. Silly things that pinged out easily like old light bulbs.

To work best democracy needs a diversity of thoughts, ideas and expression. This is only possible with freedom and civility.