What Do People Say About Civility?

"Empowered by faith, consistently, prayerfully, we need to find our way back to civility.  That begins with stepping out of our comfort zones in an effort to bridge divisions... Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable; understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, that "civility is not a sign of weakness."

- President Barack Obama, The National Prayer Breakfast, Feb. 4, 2010

 

"I don't believe in confrontation. That seems to me outside civil discourse and we all have to find way to be civil to one another."

 - Condoleezza Rice, NPR All Things Considered, March 4, 2009

 

"As citizens we have to be more thoughtful and educated and more informed. I turn on the TV and I see these grown people screaming at each other, and I think, well, if we don't get our civility back, we're in trouble."

- Emmylou Harris, singer-songwriter

 
"There is a toxic nature to Washington that thrives on food fights and thrives on controversy and thrives on people not getting along."

 - Matthew Dowd, President George W. Bush's pollster
Vanity Fair, May 24, 2001

 

"Civility costs nothing and buys everything."

 - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, English writer 1689-1766

 

"Teaching civility is an obligation of the family."

- Stephen Carter, American law professor at Yale Law School
and author of Civility: Manners, Morals, And The Etiquette Of Democracy
(Harper Perennial, 1999)

 

 
"It's too much to expect in an academic setting that we should all agree, but it's not too much to expect discipline and unvarying civility."

- John Howard, Australian statesman

 

"Civility is not something that automatically happens. Civil societies come about because people want them to."

- Jimmy Bise Jr., author

 

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