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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Must simplicity and humanity go under in the interest of progress? What is the most important component of civilization - is it human or mechanical? Must thought processes become involved and insincere? Must the class-struggle warp those who are involved in it?
Civilization consists in the multiplication and refinement of human wants.
If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.
Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. But very shortly - on a historical scale, that is - we can expect technology to break the upper bound on intelligence that has held for the last few tens of thousands of years.
Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization.
Civilization is the making of civil persons.
The greatest enemy of progress is the illusion of knowledge.
Since the Renaissance, a concept called 'progress' has been baked into our society. Progress - founded on an accumulation of knowledge through experience (and in the case of science, through experiment). To build on the past rather than endlessly relive it. That's what separates us from the beasts.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.