Decline Quotes - Page 28

• 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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• Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West.

  Walter Lippmann

  Fall, Government, Order

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.241, Harvard University Press

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• When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear. When the body's intelligence declines, cleverness and knowledge step forth. When there is no peace in the family, filial piety begins. When the country falls into chaos, patriotism is born.

  Laozi

  Country, Fall, Body

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• President Obama flew to China a few days ago and announced a joint environmental pact with the communist regime. The United States will reduce its carbon emissions substantially over the next 11 years. China will do absolutely nothing but hope that its emissions decline after 2030.

  Erick Erickson

  Years, Carbon Emissions, Environmental

  Erick Erickson (2016). “The Wrong Type of Values”, p.60, Creators Publishing

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• When poverty declines, the need for government declines, which is why expecting government to solve poverty is like expecting a tobacco company to mount an aggressive anti-smoking campaign.

  Stefan Molyneux

  Government, Smoking, Needs

  Twitter post from Nov 8, 2017

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• Governments grow as God declines, in both Europe and the United States

  Dennis Prager

  Government, Europe, United States

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• We conservatives bemoan the decline in values that has besieged our society. Why then should we not abhor the lack of morality involved in discharging untested chemicals into the air, ground, and water to alter and harm, to whatever degree, human life and wildlife? As a conservative, I do abhor it.

  Wendell Berry

  Air, Water, Degrees

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• We must develop a compelling vision of later life: one that does not assume a trajectory of decline after fifty, but one that recognizes it as a time of change, growth and new learning, a time when our courage gives us hope.

  Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

  Giving, Growth, Vision

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• This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Art, Hate, Fall

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• Prominent exploration experts have recently predicted that total world production of liquid oil will peak by about the end of this decade-or a few years later if production does not rise much-and will decline thereafter.

  Amory Lovins

  Years, Oil, Energy

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• We need to find three Saudi Arabias just to offset [the] decline.

  Matthew Simmons

  Environmental, Three, Needs

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• Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality-you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions. Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Government, Principles, Attention

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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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• What we mean by Tao is the way or course of Nature. This way has nothing good or bad, it is a mere flowing of things following the development and decline attributes of the moment.

  Jian Yang

  Mean, Taoism, Development

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• If the practice persists of covering government deficits with the issue of notes, then the day will come without fail, sooner or later, when the monetary systems of those nations pursuing this course will break down completely. The purchasing power of the monetary unit will decline more and more, until finally it disappears completely.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Government, Disappear Completely, Practice

  Ludwig Von Mises (1978). “On the Manipulation of Money and Credit”, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. : Free Market Books

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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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• I am not satisfied that Darwin proved his point or that his influence in scientific and public thinking has been beneficial ... the success of Darwinism was accomplished by a decline in scientific integrity.

  W. R. Thompson

  Integrity, Thinking, Influence

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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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