Degenerate

Famous quotes containing the word degenerate:

“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“A degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.”
—Seventeenth-century English saying.

“Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the Indians, and their degenerate children no longer dwell in garrisoned houses nor hear any war-whoop in their path.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)