Decline Quotes - Page 24

• A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

  Will Durant

  War, Struggle, Rome

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1944). “The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ, a history of Roman civilization and of Christianity from their beginnings to A.D. 325”

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• Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is fired in World War II. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as wellknown as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation. Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.... These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little to produce that small models will be made for teenage youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled the prewar roads.

  Harry Bruno

  Teenage, War, School

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• The sluggish economy is creating a situation where the young people in Japan cannot cherish their desires or have prospects for their future. Also, the decline in Japan's economic capability is resulting in a declining presence for Japan's foreign policy as well.
  
  Accordingly, the duties and mission that I must fulfill are pretty clear: namely, to regain a strong and robust economy, and also to restore Japan's strong foreign policy capability.

  Shinzo Abe

  Strong, Japan, Creating

  "Interview with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe". www.washingtonpost.com. February 20, 2013.

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• A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Teacher, Teaching, Levels

  "Culture and Value" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by Peter Winch, (p. 43e), 1980.

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• nothing like a few restful weeks contemplating the decline of civilization to restore the humors. What I did on my summer vacation was listen to a lot of people talk about the decline of practically everything - you could call it the leisure of the theory class.

  Molly Ivins

  Summer, Vacation, Civilization

  Molly Ivins (2010). “You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You”, p.200, Vintage

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• Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.

  Madame de Stael

  God, Thinking, Increase

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• Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.

  Susan Sontag

  Notebook, Writing, Letters

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.511, Macmillan

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• Fortunes are made, if I the facts may state--
  Though poor myself, I know the fortunate:
  First, there's a knowledge of the way from whence
  Good fortune comes--and this is sterling sense:
  Then perseverance, never to decline
  The chase of riches till the prey is thine;
  And firmness never to be drawn away
  By any passion from that noble prey--
  By love, ambition, study, travel, fame,
  Or the vain hope that lives upon a name.

  George Crabbe

  Perseverance, Ambition, Passion

  George Crabbe (1839). “The Poetical Works of Crabbe, Heber, and Pollok: Complete in One Volume”, p.364

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• ...shellfish are the prime cause of the decline of morals and the adaptation of an extravagant lifestyle. Indeed of the whole realm of Nature the sea is in many ways the most harmful to the stomach, with its great variety of dishes and tasty fish.

  Pliny the Elder

  Food, Sea, Cooking

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• Nations are political and military entities, and so are blocs of nations. But it doesn't necessarily follow from this that they are also the basic, salient entities of economic life or that they are particularly useful for probing the mysteries of economic structure, the reasons for rise and decline of wealth. Indeed, the failure of national governments and blocs of nations to force economic life to do their bidding suggests some sort of essential irrelevance.

  Jane Jacobs

  Military, Irrelevance, Government

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “Cities and the Wealth of Nations”, p.39, Vintage

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• Pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives.

  Neil Diamond

  Husband, Pride, Numbers

  Song: Husbands And Wives, Album: Stones, 1971

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• It is certainly much easier wholly to decline a passion than to keep it within just bounds and measures; and that which few can moderate almost anybody may prevent.

  Pierre Charron

  Passion, May, Easier

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• The planet's biggest problems have to do with sustainability, environmental decline, global poverty, disease, conflict and so forth. Really, they're all interconnected - it's one big problem, which is that the way we're doing things can't go on.

  Alex Steffen

  Environmental, Goes On, Disease

  CNN Interview, www.cnn.com. March 11, 2008.

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• Transnational corporate networks, and their resulting spatial patterns, are always in a continuous state of flux. At any one time, some parts may be growing rapidly, others may be stagnating, others may be in steep decline.

  Peter Dicken

  May, Patterns, Growing

  Peter Dicken (2003). “Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century”, p.250, SAGE

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• American people, what about the American people? I think the president delights in the fact that they have been roofied by technology and pop culture. They're not conscious to any expansion of power, which is why they're happy to exist in this dependant decline.

  Greg Gutfeld

  Technology, Thinking, People

  "Critics pan Obama's threat to bypass Congress". "The Five" with Kimberly Guilfoyle, Bob Beckel, Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, and Greg Gutfeld, www.foxnews.com. January 16, 2014.

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• Agriculture has become essential to life; the forest, the lake, and the ocean cannot sustain the increasing family of man; population declines with a declining cultivation, and nations have ceased to be with the extinction of their agriculture.

  Elias Hasket Derby

  Ocean, Men, Agriculture

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• Dartmouth is the place I've devoted my life to, so it's very sad to see this kind of decline in the intellectual strength of the institution.

  Jon Appleton

  Intellectual, Kind, Very Sad

  "Long-time music prof leaves for Stanford". The Dartmouth, September 30, 2005.

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• When under the influence of certain (or some) reasons (or causes) (alcohol, war, etc - added Spir here) the low instincts are unbridled (or unrestrained), the brute appears (or come forward, "apparait", Fr.) and rule over (or dominate), stifling every ("toute", Fr.) noble, generous impulse; it is then the ruin (or downfall or decline) of any humanity in man.

  African Spir

  War, Men, Alcohol

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 48), 1937.

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• Coming to know one another based on a shared humanity through dialogue is the key to breaking down the walls of isolation and reversing the decline of life-to-life bonds among human beings.

  Vinessa Shaw

  Wall, Keys, Humanity

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• My theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Civilization, Theory, Historian

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• If kissing is man's greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being man's worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing out of the others, to foster civilization and lead Western humanity to its present state of decline.

  Tom Robbins

  Kissing, Men, Animal

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.285, Bantam

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• I decline Christianity because it is Jewish, because it is international, and because, in cowardly fashion, it preaches Peace on Earth.

  Erich Ludendorff

  Fashion, Earth, Superstitions

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• Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.

  Benjamin Graham

  Real, Loss, Risk

  Benjamin Graham, Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, Financial Analysts Research Foundation (1974). “The Renaissance of value: the proceedings of a seminar on the economy, interest rates, portfolio management, and bonds vs common stocks, September 18, 1974”

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• Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.

  William McDonough

  Nature, Taken, Animal

  William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.16, Macmillan

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• When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature with respect to it is usually very cold. Only gradually does the idea develop its warmth, and it is hottest (which is to say, exerting its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already once again in decline.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Ideas, Soul, Doe

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