A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
In civilised society, personal merit will not serve you so much as money will. Sir, you may make the experiment. Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you the most.
Ours is not so much an age of vulgarity as of vulgarization; everything is tampered with or touched up, or adulterated or watered down, in an effort to make it palatable, in an effort to make it pay.
The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.
You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don't have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments.
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.