“There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.”

—  Francis Galton , Hereditary Genius

Hereditary Genius (1869), p. 414
Hereditary Genius (1869)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious…" by Francis Galton?
Francis Galton photo
Francis Galton 14
British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in euge… 1822–1911

Related quotes

Matthew Arnold photo

“What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

" Civilization in the United States http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ArnCivi.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all" (1888)

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_commons_indiagovt_1833.html#13
Attributed

José Ortega Y Gasset photo

“[T]he direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but — from what we can judge to-day — of any civilisation. …[T]he type of man dominant to-day is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Nayef Al-Rodhan photo

“Justice is paramount to civilisational triumph because of its centrality to human dignity needs, the success of individual geo-cultural domains and the well-being of human civilisation.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.219

Joseph Arch photo

“Those who ruled in high places, and had the making of the laws in their hands, were chiefly rich landowners and successful traders, and instead of trying to raise the people, create a higher standard of comfort and well-being, and better their general condition, they did their best or worst to keep them in a state of poverty and serfdom, of dependence and wretchedness.”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

Source: The Story of his Life Told by Himself (1898), p. 11

Kate Bush photo

“The civilised keep alive
The territorial war…
Erase the race that claim the place
And say we dig for ore,
Or dangle devils in a bottle
And push them from the pull of the Bush.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Source: Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)

Tony Blair photo

“This is not a clash between civilisations. It is a clash about civilisation.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Clash about civilisations" speech http://web.archive.org/20060411042815/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page9224.asp, Prime Minister's website.
Foreign Policy speech at Reuters Headquarters, London, on 21 March 2006.
2000s

Matt Haig photo

“As civilisation advances, so does indifference.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

The Humans

“For mankind may survive and live without machines, and still be civilised. But without compassion, the human race can only elaborate upon the futile cunning and the barren intelligence of the great apes.”

Edmund Cooper book Seed of Light

Seed of Light (1959)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“I have always felt that the best security for civilisation is the dwelling, and that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind. Such dwellings are the nursery of all domestic virtues, and without a becoming home the exercise of those virtues is impossible.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech at the opening of Shaftesburgh Park Estate (18 July 1874), cited in Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Collected from his Writings and Speeches (1881), p. 38.

Related topics