Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

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.

Civilization is vastly overrated.

Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt.

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

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.

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.

Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.

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.

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

I have thought it a sufficient definition of civilization to say, it is the influence of good women.

Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.

A nation may be ever so civilized and yet lack wisdom.

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

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?

"Civilization rests on two things," said Hitzig; "the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?"

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. If he finds himself an individual who cannot live in society, or who pretends he has need of only his own resources do not consider him as a member of humanity; he is a savage beast or a god.

There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.

The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.

Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

Liberty built civilization. It can rebuild civilization.

What does civilization mean to you, and what would its ending bring to the world?