“We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy.”
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Politics
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes

“Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie”
Prelude to Pt. I, st. 2
The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)
Context: Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.

A Plea for Time (1950), a paper presented at the University of New Brunswick, published in The Bias of Communication (1951) p. 64.
The Bias of Communication (1951)

Between Hell and Reason (1945)
Context: The world is what it is, which is to say, nothing much. This is what everyone learned yesterday, thanks to the formidable concert of opinion coming from radios, newspapers, and information agencies. Indeed we are told, in the midst of hundreds of enthusiastic commentaries, that any average city can be wiped out by a bomb the size of a football. American, English, and French newspapers are filled with eloquent essays on the future, the past, the inventors, the cost, the peaceful incentives, the military advantages, and even the life-of-its-own character of the atom bomb.
We can sum it up in one sentence: Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests.
Meanwhile we think there is something indecent in celebrating a discovery whose use has caused the most formidable rage of destruction ever known to man. What will it bring to a world already given over to all the convulsions of violence, incapable of any control, indifferent to justice and the simple happiness of men — a world where science devotes itself to organized murder? No one but the most unrelenting idealists would dare to wonder.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

“Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.”

“Civilization without its appliances is weaker than barbarism.”
The Canoe and the Saddle: Adventures Among the Northwestern Rivers and Forests (1863), ch. ix: Via Mala.