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Cultural Decay Quotes

Quotes tagged as "cultural-decay" Showing 1-18 of 18
Arnold J. Toynbee
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”
Arnold Toynbee

Edward Gibbon
“The five marks of the Roman decaying culture:

Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth;

Obsession with sex and perversions of sex;

Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original;

Widening disparity between very rich and very poor;

Increased demand to live off the state.”
Edward Gibbon

Arnold J. Toynbee
“Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.”
Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.”
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Robert A. Heinlein
“Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
Robert A Heinlein, Friday

Jean-François Revel
“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
Jean-Francois Revel

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Wendell Berry
“If we do not live where we work and when we work we are wasting our lives and our work too.”
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

Mark Steyn
“A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it's dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us?”
Mark Steyn

John Milton
“How oft, in nations gone corrupt,
And by their own devices brought down to servitude,
That man chooses bondage before liberty.
Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.”
John Milton

Stephen Jenkinson
“Having a conscience now is a grief-soaked proposition”
Stephen Jenkinson

“The evidence, unfortunately, is that the West is not even remotely interested in mounting a defense of its values in the face of Muslim fanaticism. Worse, there are signs that the West is even prepared to sacrifice some of its core values in order to appease those who have always despised these values.”
Lee Harris

Allan Bloom
“Although the natural rights inherent in our( Constitutional) regime are adequate to the solution of this ( minority) problem...the equal protection of the law did not protect a man from contempt and hatred as a Jew, an Italian or a Black"..." 'Openness' was designed to provide a respectable place for those groups or minorities--to wrest respect from those who were disposed to give it--This breaks the delicate balance between majority and minority in Constitutional thought. In such a perspective where there is no common good, minorities are no longer problematic and the protection of them emerges as THE central function of government.”
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Jason Najum
“After college I got a job and started working. This new career had absolutely nothing to do with my degree.”
Jason Najum, Delusions of Grandeur

Austin Dragon
“US Constitution is unconstitutional.â€� â€� Circuit Judges Alfred T. Goodwin and Stephen Reinhardt, Federal Appeals Court, San Francisco, 2002 (overturned)

“US Constitution is unconstitutional.â€� â€� The United States Supreme Court, 2079”
Austin Dragon, Thy Kingdom Fall

Heather Choate Davis
“In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the youngâ€�-well, not even the young anymoreâ€�-need to obey. Funny, because the root of the word obey is from the French verb meaning “to listen, or to give ear to.â€� It was never intended as a militant word, but one of hearing, of understanding. Of getting it. For a world obsessed with staying in constant communication, we aren’t really very good listeners.”
Heather Choate Davis, Elijah & the SAT: Reflections on a hairy old desert prophet and the benchmarking of our children's lives

Rick Remender
“Enough rationalization. They simply had what you wanted, so you took it.

[My chair-- I shit on my good chair!]

You shit more than just your chair.

You shit the world. All you ever cared about was winning -- And you did.

The last man standing on a mountain of filth [. . .]

Kazumi taught forgiveness. She accepted all refugees looking for a better life. And you turned that against her.

Kazumi would show mercy.

I'm not Kazumi.”
Rick Remender, Tokyo Ghost, Vol. 2: Come Join Us

“Look around you. Look closely at your neighbors and the strangers you pass in the streets. Are they starting to morph into fellaheen? Is social media a global electronic machine - a cyber factory - for generating fellaheen ... people who have lost all sense of history and are focused entirely on themselves? Dante called them 'Ignavi' and said they were the most abject people of all.”
John Tierney, Jordan Peterson and the Second Religiousness: Explaining the Jordan Peterson Phenomenon