# Quote — Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men

> Thus it was that America sank further and further into Americanism. Vast wealth and industry, and also brilliant invention, were concentrated upon puerile ends. In particular the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. Those who achieved power were satisfied so long as they could merely retain it, and advertise it uncritically in the conventionally self-assertive manners.

- Author: [Olaf Stapledon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon.md)
- Book: [Last And First Men](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men.md)
- Page: 34
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon#Last_and_First_Men_(1930)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/thus-it-was

## More from this book

> Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other time within which it can repeat itself.

p. 229 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/yet-though-time.md)

> [T]his is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning.

p. 231 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/t-his-is-the.md)

> Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved the other.
>
> Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable.

p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/socrates-woke-to-the.md)