Henry Adams Quotes

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

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.

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

Wherever humanity has made that hardest of all starts and lifted itself out of mere brutality is a sacred spot.

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

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

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.

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

Civilization is the sum total of all those activities that allow men to transcend mere biological existence and reach for a richer mental, aesthetic, material, and spiritual life.

History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.

Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.

The trend of all knowledge at the present is to specialize, but archaeology has in it all the qualities that call for the wide view of the human race, of its growth from the savage to the civilized, which is seen in all stages of social and religious development.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

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.

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.

Men in masses do not forget the main gains of their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their tendency is upward.

The true test of the progress of a people is to be found in their literature.

History is the zoology of the human race.

Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards

What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the [Ancient] Greeks?

It is common to think of our own time as standing on the apex of human history.

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

I want to talk about the nature of human beings or how we're evolving as a race.

Woman's success in lifting men out of their way of life nearly resembling that of the beasts who merely hunted and fished for food, who found shelter where they could in jungles, in trees, and caves was a civilizing triumph.

There's a distinct American culture that evolved from the United States founding, and that is what made America great, is what allowed the human being to become.