Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.

Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

The rise of man from the animal to the human level was prolonged by the necessity of rising from a state of barbarism and violence to one of order and peace.

The human race is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive night ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization.

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.

No community ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called civilization

Civilization and religion do not necessarily move with equal pace.

With highly civilized nations, continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigor of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.

There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.

It is inherent in human consciousness to improve. So there is nothing unique about a people searching for and creating ways to make their life better - all civilizations throughout history have done this. What is unique about us in America is the accelerated rate at which we continually search for novelty and progress.

Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.

The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.

Since that time up until the present time, there have been progress, and changes all through the time. The changes have not come by themselves; these changes have come from the doings of everyone in the country.

Think about it for a brief moment. Suspend disbelief. Wind the clock forward 100 years. Do you think, as a species, we will still be struggling with the things that vex us today? Will we still be arguing about the same stuff? We will still be eating Cocoa Puffs? We are at the end of the beginning.

I have this feeling that as time goes on, we're not getting any more civilized, and we should be. We're still running around like the days of Genghis Khan. There are so many important, better things to do and we need to encourage people to reach into the brighter side of humanity and not encourage people to continue to glorify the darker side.

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

All civilizations must go through four stages: The first stage is the emergence of a new civilization and society. The second stage covers a period of growth and prosperity. Stagnation and decadence characterize the third stage where wealth can no longer increase. This brings us to a fourth stage of decline leading to the ultimate collapse. Finally, a new civilization emerges from the ashes of the previous one and another cycle is born. The conditions of the world, and of the nations do not persist in one unchanging state but are transformed with the passage of time and move from one condition to another

The modern civilized State has been developed by the antagonism between individual and social interests, which has transformed primitive Society into Civilization.

The history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.

The progress of a nation can alone prevent degeneration. There must be new life and purpose or there will be weakness and decay. There must be broadening of thought as well as broadening of trade. Territorial expansion is not alone and always necessary to national advancement. There must be a constant movement toward a higher and nobler civilization, a civilization that shall make its conquests without resort to war, and achieve its greatest victories pursuing the arts of peace. In our present situation, duty and duty alone should prescribe the boundary of our responsibilities and the scope of our undertakings.