Civilization (n.) rests, for the professor, on "I tell you what to think and you write it down"; so a student asking why he should read Plato really is shaking its foundations.
Civilization (n.) shows its real face, the bourgeois kind, only when its drudges revolt: then its justice turns into open savagery and lawless revenge.
Civilization (n.) as Europe exported it was a deadly plague that devastated much of the world.
Civilization (n.) at its height in science and the arts produced the most monstrous regime in history — Germany, once thought a model democracy.
Civilization (n.) will die if competition — devil take the hindmost — really is the final system the world will see.
Civilization (n.) is measured by the fate of the vulnerable: a thousand children dying of preventable disease in the span of a talk shows how far off it is.