The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Interpretation
Civilization may lead to the downfall of humanity due to its excesses and complexities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote suggests a pessimistic view of civilization, indicating that the very advancements and complexities that define civilized life could ultimately contribute to humanity's extinction. The focus on progress, technology, and societal structures may create an unsustainable environment that could lead to self-destruction, prompting reflection on the balance between civilization and human survival.
In practice
During a debate on the impact of technology on society, this quote can highlight the potential risks of advancements.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
We often forget that everything we see, animate or inanimate, is a visual manifestation of the work of our invisible God. We have become so accustomed to trees, mountains, sky, air, water, flowers, animals, vegetables and people that we no longer see them for what they are - God's work.
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.
If you don't have the smoking gun, then it's pointless to hector interviewees. Because you just shut people up instead of opening them up.
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.
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