Decline Quotes - Page 19

• Writing with a simplified alphabet checked the power of custom of an oral tradition but implied a decline in the power of expression and the creation of grooves which determined the channels of thought of readers and later writers.

  Harold Innis

  Writing, Expression, Oral Tradition

  Harold Innis (1999). “The Bias of Communication”, p.50, University of Toronto Press

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• An ongoing challenge for Australia is ensuring equity of access to technology. Since the decline in federal funding, many schools are reverting to bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs and this puts the onus back on families to fund devices.

  Susan Mann

  School, Technology, Australia

  "The Global Search for Education: The Tech Report - From Australia". Interview with C. M. Rubin, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 15, 2015.

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• Silene, who declines The garish noontide's blazing light; But when the evening crescent shines, Gives all her sweetness to the night.

  Charlotte Turner Smith

  Flower, Night, Light

  Charlotte Turner Smith (2014). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Charlotte Smith (Illustrated)”, p.300, Delphi Classics

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• Once, BBC television had echoed BBC radio in being a haven for standard English pronunciation. Then regional accents came in: a democratic plus. Then slipshod usage came in: an egalitarian minus. By now slovenly grammar is even more rife on the BBC channels than on ITV. In this regard a decline can be clearly charted... If the BBC, once the guardian of the English language, has now become its most implacable enemy, let us at least be grateful when the massacre is carried out with style.

  Clive James

  Grateful, Style, Enemy

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• The Doxology ... that testimonial to the Platonic Trinity, which divided the Roman Empire into at least eighteen quarreling sects, none of whom knew what they were fighting about, and which schisms contributed to the decline and fall of this greatest of states. Rome had thrived for one thousand years with pagan gods at the helm and expired after only one hundred and fifty years under the Christian banner.

  Ruth Hurmence Green

  Christian, Fall, Fighting

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• I'm not running to manage the decline of this great country. I'm running to make real changes in D.C.

  Bobby Jindal

  Running, Country, Real

  "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd, www.nbcnews.com. June 28, 2015.

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• A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  May, Today, West

  A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, www.orthodoxytoday.org. June 8, 1978.

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• A major cause of the Roman Empire's decline, after six centuries of world dominance was its replacement of stone aqueducts by lead pipes for the transport and supply of drinking water. Roman engineers, the best in the world, turned their fellow citizens into cripples. Today our own "best and brightest," with the best of intentions, achieve the same end through childhood vaccination programmes yielding the modern scourges of hyperactivity, learning disabilities, autism, appetite disorders, and impulsive violence.

  Harris L Coulter

  Drinking, Aqueducts, Autism

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• We scornfully decline, because of one whom we love and who will some day be of so little account, to see another who is of no account to-day, with whom we shall be in love to-morrow, with whom we might, perhaps, had we consented to see her now, have fallen in love a little earlier and who would thus have put a term to our present sufferings, bringing others, it is true, in their place.

  Marcel Proust

  Suffering, Littles, Might

  Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.949, Delphi Classics

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• Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior according to the methods developed by animal and infant psychology. It seeks to investigate reflexes and instincts, automatisms and unconscious reactions. But it has told us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals, railroads, and fortresses, the instincts that have produced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the automatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline of empires, the unconscious reactions that are splitting atoms.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Philosophy, Animal, Psychology

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• The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Atmosphere, Genius, Body

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2006, Delphi Classics

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• As Pride increases, Fortune declines.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Pride, Increase, Fortune

  Benjamin Franklin (2012). “Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.26, Courier Corporation

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• Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
  Trifle not at thirty-five;
  For, howe'er we boast and strive,
  Life declines from thirty-five;
  He that ever hopes to thrive
  Must begin by thirty-five.

  Samuel Johnson

  Women, Age, Strive

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.87

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• It is important to remember that these are your Declining Years, in which you can jolly well decline to do what you don't feel like doing, unless not doing it would make you feel worse than doing it.

  Peg Bracken

  Years, Important, Aging

  Peg Bracken (1996). “On Getting Old for the First Time”, Bookpartners

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• Rejoice, and men will seek you;
  Grieve, and they turn and go,
  They want full measure of all your pleasure,
  But they do not need your woe.
  Be glad, and your friends are many;
  Be sad, and you lose them all,--
  There are none to decline your nectar'd wine,
  But alone you must drink life's gall.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Friendship, Wine, Men

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.504, Delphi Classics

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• The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Pain, Doubt, Growth

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• A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar. The case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor towards the latter part of life.

  William Shenstone

  Friendship, Passion, Tree

  William Shenstone (1765). “Essays on men and manners. A description of the Leasowes, the seat of the late William Shenstone, esq., by R. Dodsley. Verses to Mr. Shenstone”, p.142

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• Old France, weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal!

  Charles de Gaulle

  War, Greatness, France

  Charles de Gaulle (1960). “War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944-1946. Translated from the French by R. Howard”

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• Should you happen to notice that another person is extremely tall or overweight, eats too much or declines convivial drinks, has red hair or goes about in a wheelchair, ought to get married or ought not to be pregnant -- see if you can refrain from bringing these astonishing observations to that person's attention.

  Judith Martin

  Hair, Attention, Red

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• Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ever had in my life.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Book, Thinking, Age

  Maria Edgeworth (1895). “The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth”

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• Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack of leisure, the lack of sentiment ... They talk of telegrams, and telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters.

  Agnes Repplier

  Passion, Writing, Heart

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• A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage-market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years.

  Alan Greenspan

  Home, Years, Levels

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• Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not; if honest man refuse it, others will not.

  John Adams

  Wise, Men, Done

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• During the Cold War, we gathered information by listening to the Soviets, taking pictures of the Soviets, and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.

  Bob Graham

  War, Aggravation, Listening

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• There is a connection waiting to be made between the decline in democratic participation and the explosion in new ways of communicating. We need not accept the paradox that gives us more ways than ever to speak, and leaves the public with a wider feeling than ever before that their voices are not being heard. The new technologies can strengthen our democracy, by giving us greater opportunities than ever before for better transparency and a more responsive relationship between government and electors

  Robin Cook

  Technology, Opportunity, Government

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