Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Civility & Incivility")
September 7 - 13, 2025 | THIS WEEK'S THEME: “Civility & Incivility"
Opening Line of the Week
An anecdote involving a famous person is a time-honored way to open a book, and Sachs couldn’t have found a better way to set the stage for a book directly linking two great, but very different historical figures—George Washington, the first U.S. President, and Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of one of the world’s great religions.
For more than 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.
I’m currently working on my annual, end-of-the-year post on “The Best Opening Lines of 2025.” If you come across a great opening line in something you’ve recently read, e-mail it to me at: drmardy@drmardy.com.
This Week’s Puzzler
On September 13, 1938, this woman was born in Washington, DC (she celebrates her 87th birthday this week). As a result of her father’s job as an economist for the United Nations, she grew up all around the world. After graduating with an English major from Wellesley College in 1959, she moved back to Washington, DC, where she took a job as a “copy girl” at the Washington Post.
Over the years, she worked in a variety of jobs at the paper: embassy reporter, White House social reporter, and theater/movie critic. In 1969, she co-founded the paper’s “Style” section. And in 1978, she began writing an advice column titled “Miss Manners.” About the moniker, she said:
“I made myself Miss Manners. It was like Napoleon: You crown yourself because nobody else can do it.”
This week’s Mystery Woman is one of history’s most famous etiquette guides, but in her writings and interviews, she offered as much social commentary as she did advice. In a 1998 Psychology Today interview, for example, she said:
Who is this person? (Answers below)
Where Are You on the Civility-Incivility Scale?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines civility and incivility this way:
In the late 14th century, the word civility came to English from the French civilité, meaning “relating to a citizen or public life; befitting a citizen.” The French word, in turn, derived from the Latin cīvīlitās, meaning “the condition or conduct of a citizen; good citizenship.” By the 16th century, the meaning of the word in English had narrowed to “courtesy, politeness, and good breeding in social interaction.”
Incivility is simply the negative form of the word, coming from the Latin incīvīlitās and the French incivilité, meaning “a lack of civility; rudeness.” The word first appeared in English in the late 16th century, retaining the meaning of a lack or courtesy or rudeness. The etymology of both words conveys the idea that polite conduct isn’t simply “being nice,” but rather behavior befitting the civilized citizens of a state.
The word civility has an old-fashioned “feel,” and it’s possible it would have faded into obscurity were it not for the efforts of one individual—George Washington. When he was in his early teens, young George completed a penmanship exercise in which he hand-copied 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior.”
The list was originally prepared around 1595 by French Jesuits for use in the education of young aristocrats. The Rules of Civility, as they came to be called, found their way to England in 1640, and then to America in the early 1700s. Somewhere around 1740, they also found their way into the hands of one of young George Washington’s schoolmasters.
At Washington’s death in 1799, his complete set of notebooks—including the Rules of Civility portion—survived among his papers. However, it would take another 125 years before they would become a part of American culture. The process began in 1888, when J. M. Toner published a full literal transcript of all 110 rules. Over the next several decades, more editions appeared, including a number that formally traced the rules to the French Jesuits who originally drafted them. While none of the rules specifically used the term civility, many clearly reflected the idea of polite and courteous behavior:
“Show not yourself glad at another’s misfortune.”
“When advising or reproving…do it with mildness.”
“Speak not injurious words, neither in jest nor earnest; scoff at none.”
“Let conversation be without malice or envy; let reason govern passion.”
“Use no reproachful language against any one; neither curse nor revile.”
In 1926, Houghton Mifflin brought the entire list to a general audience when it published George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. The 1926 book became extremely popular and quickly moved the text from a largely unknown historical curiosity into the curricula of American schools.
The book also had the effect of making civility seem less like the prissy manners of a European court and more like a home-grown American virtue—one that enabled a diverse group of citizens to live and work together without unnecessary discord or unproductive chaos. For the remainder of the 20th century, the concept of civility was publicly hailed by almost all American political leaders, even though it was clear to many that some were merely paying lip service to the idea.
If I were to trace the roots of civility in human life, I would say that human empathy is the driving force behind the concept, with a powerful assist from The Golden Rule. When we’re able to “walk in the shoes” of other people and see the world from their point of view, we can not only imagine how they’d like to be treated, but we can—often with very little effort—treat them in exactly that way. The notion that civility begins when we shift our perspective from me to we was nicely expressed by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759):
“In the imagination we place ourselves in [another man’s] situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person.”
When we add The Golden Rule to the mix—especially Rabbi Hillel’s compact version, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor”—we end up with a practical recipe for everyday civility. Others have also made the connection.
When Abraham Lincoln talked about “the better angels of our nature” in his first Inaugural Address in 1861, he had the idea of civility in mind even though he didn’t formally use the term. His words during that dark and divided time continue to ring true today:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
It’s hard to find anyone who would disagree with the assertion that, over the last fifty years, there’s been a steady erosion of civility in public life—not only in America, but all around the world. Every night on the TV news, we see examples of incivility everywhere—in homes, workplaces, community gatherings, shopping malls, gas stations, classrooms, grocery stores, senior citizen centers, airplanes, and, of course, in the arena where it has become most prominent, the world of politics.
This week, let me bring my remarks to a close by offering some thoughts about a number of things that appear to be fueling the increased incidence—and the increased intensity—of incivility in modern life. While incivility literally means the absence of civility, in practice it means the presence of a number of negative ingredients. They include the following:
Politics, which used to be regarded as “the art of the possible,” has become increasingly ideological. Predictably, “purity tests” have replaced practical problem-solving—and party loyalty trumps loyalty to the truth of things or the facts that are staring us in the face. Clifton Fadiman hit the nail on the head when he once said, “An ideologue…is not interested in ideas, but—almost the exact contrary—in one idea.”
We’ve increasingly become a grievance-oriented culture. A deep grievance can sometimes harden into entitlement, and the feeling that I’ve been wronged can become a blank check that’s used to justify highly inappropriate behavior. In Anzia Yezierska’s 1920 short story “Soap and Water,” the protagonist confesses: “I was so obsessed and consumed with my grievances that I could not get away from myself and think things out in the light. I was in the grip of that blinding, destructive, terrible thing—righteous indignation.”
It’s become more common to view opponents as enemies. When people view fellow citizens as enemies rather than people who hold different beliefs, the rules of basic respect no longer apply. The predictable result is the dehumanization of adversaries and the adoption of extreme measures to punish, defeat, or, at its worst, even destroy them.
More and more people are engaged in conspiratorial thinking. In almost all cases, conspiracy theories casts opponents as malevolent actors, all the while portraying the believers as part of a savvy in-group who possess secret knowledge about the many evil activities of their opponents. What could go wrong?
Rudeness often masquerades as honesty. “I’m just telling it like it is” has become the calling card of the modern master of incivility.
Gerrymandering has only made things worse. The modern science of Gerrymandering has become so sophisticated that it has become a political truism that politicians can now choose their voters rather than the other way around. The result is that politicians increasingly feel they can say and do anything without fear of consequences.
Our civic and political leaders have let us down. Not too long ago, we relied on leaders to set an example, but today we’re seeing them (1) increasingly modeling the wrong behavior, and (2) refusing to “call out” their colleagues when they behave badly.
As a result of these factors—and more I could have mentioned if I had more time—incivility is the predictable consequence of a number of different factors operating in a kind of collusion with each other. The great French writer was thinking along these lines when he wrote in his 1688 masterpiece The Characters:
To return to the question I posed at the beginning: where would you place yourself on a Civility–Incivility Scale? Start by considering how you typically interact with people you disagree with—especially those whose politics differ from yours.
Do you generally speak in a respectful tone, asking questions that genuinely explore their thinking, and then listen patiently without interrupting? Do you seek clarification where you don’t understand? And when you disagree, do you reach for non-judgmental phrases like “I see things differently,” or “I have a different point of view”? If this sounds like you, you belong comfortably near the CIVILITY end of the scale.
By contrast, when you find yourself in disagreement, do you interrupt, roll your eyes in disbelief, and sarcastically dismiss what people are saying? Do you slip into name-calling or begin to use emotionally-loaded labels like “foolish,” “naïve,” or “stupid”? And when things get heated, do you resort to dismissive profanity to make your point? If so, you’re living near the INCIVILITY end of the scale.
Perhaps you find yourself somewhere in the middle—in what we might call a CHALLENGING BUT CONSTRUCTIVE mode. Here, you listen fully, then pose tough, precise questions without a hint of rudeness. You often summarize the other person’s view before offering your response. You try to separate people from the positions they take. You aim for understanding or progress over victory. And when you overstep—or misstep—you attempt a course-correction by saying things like “That sounded harsher than I meant; let me try again.”
Remember, civility isn’t about surrendering your convictions in a disagreement, it’s about how you hold them and how you express them. The goal isn’t to be nice, or polite, or courteous—it’s to be clear, firm, and respectful enough that your relationship with other people can survive any political disagreements you’re currently having.
As you move forward, let your thinking be stimulated by this week’s compilation of quotations on the subject.
Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business. — P. T. Barnum
Left unattended, the incivility virus quickly becomes a social epidemic, at which point treating the behavioral symptoms is barely manageable. — Lew Bayer
Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. — George W. Bush
Civility does not mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good. — Mohandas K. Gandhi
Nice is a pallid virtue. Not like honesty or courage or perseverance. On the other hand, in a nation frequently lacking in civility, there is much to be said for nice. — Molly Ivins
Incivility is contagious—often spreading by way of righteous indignation until even those without legitimate grievance have come down with symptoms and taken sides. — Diane Kalen-Sukra
Civility costs nothing, and buys everything. — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I know no religion that destroys courtesy, civility, and kindness. — William Penn
Good rule to follow: never reward someone’s incivility by giving them the headline they seek. — Joe Scarborough
For source information on these quotations and many others on the theme of CIVILITY & INCIVILITY, go here.
Cartoon of the Week:
Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:
Judith Martin
Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week:
Thanks for joining me again this week. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “Dignity.”
Mardy Grothe
Websites: www.drmardy.com and www.GreatOpeningLines.com
Regarding My Lifelong Love of Quotations: A Personal Note
At no age and at no level of accomplishment does any person outgrow the grace of civility.
Civility, the decision to treat others graciously is the decision to overcome one’s own vanity.
Dr. Mardy,
Simply put, civility works. I believe, " civility is the social grease which allows humans to efficiently interact, in a myriad of circumstances, with unclenched jaws and unclenched fists".
Best,
Jamie