Frank Moore Colby Quotes

When did one man ever civilize a people?

There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture, took place for the first time.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

We are not learning to view ourselves as an advanced, evolving civilization. That is what we really must learn to do, in due course, if we were to survive. All of that will take place, in due course, and we will be able to explore solar system. We will be able to go beyond it, provided we get our act together and learn to live as a civilization.

A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

Unanimity of opinion is characteristic of savages and civilization only advances as more and more people have the right to call wrong what the majority calls right..

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

Men have now arrived at such a high pitch of civilization that all institutions which act in any way to obstruct or thwart the development of individuals, and compress men together into vast uniform masses, are far more hurtful than in earlier ages of the world.

The progress made in refinement of manners and morals seems to have gone on simultaneously with the improvement in arts, manufactures and commerce. It moved slowly at first, but has been constantly increasing in velocity…. we are a much better people than we were then, better instructed, more sincere and kind-hearted, less gross and brutal, and have fewer of the concomitant vices of a less civilized state.

A certain degree of progress from the rudest state in which man is found,—a dweller in caves, or on trees, like an ape, a cannibal, an eater of pounded snails, worms, and offal,—a certain degree of progress from this extreme is called Civilization.

Civilization may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws.

The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end - the civilization of mankind.

If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?

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

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?

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

Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air?

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.

It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.

Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.

Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate as it was a thousand years ago.

In the final analysis, the progress of our civilization will be retarded if any large body of citizens falls behind. Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.

That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to State of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity; in which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civilization