Degeneration Quotes

• Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.

  Anton Chekhov

  Art, Miscarriage, Grumbling

  Letter to A.S. Suvorin, December 27, 1889.

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• Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degradation in language.

  Joseph de Maistre

  Degradation, Language, Individual

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• America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

  Georges Clemenceau

  Funny, Civilization, America

  Attributed in Saturday Review of Literature, 1 Dec. 1945

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• In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end to the whole.

  Jacob Burckhardt

  Society, Inward, Way

  Jacob Burckhardt (1964). “Force and Freedom: Reflections on History”, New York : Pantheon Books

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• In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Marriage, Husband, Selfish

  'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1'

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• In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.

  Antonin Artaud

  Mind, Skins, States

  Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.99, Grove Press

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• Detail is the heart of realism, and the fatty degeneration of art.

  Clive Bell

  Art, Reality, Details

  Clive Bell (1958). “Art”, Perigee

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• Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a large portion of it is rather the condition of all being-good.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Good Man, Be Good

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• Welcome to the degeneration of my mind.

  Hank Green

  Mind, Welcome, Of My Mind

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• We stand todaybefore the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Rome, Victory, Triumph

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• The beginning is always so fine!! But decay soon follows. A degeneration into the tired old situation. The rot sets in. This way, there is only the beauty of the start!

  Jhonen Vasquez

  Tired, Decay, Fine

  "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac". Comic book series by Jhonen Vasquez, August 1995 – January 1997.

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• Man is a degeneration of what he was.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Men, Human Beings

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Jnana Yoga: The Yoga of Knowledge”, p.13, editionNEXT.com

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• People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction.

  Noam Chomsky

  Israel, People, Moral

  "Q&A: Noam Chomsky". Interview with David Samuels, www.tabletmag.com. November 12, 2010.

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• The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Government, Evil, Choices

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• Where does one not find that bland degeneration which beer produces in the spirit!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Beer, Alcohol, Doe

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• Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

  Peter Drucker

  Work, Future, Entrepreneur

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• The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Long, Metaphysical, Damn

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• Our degeneration, when it is traced back to its origin in our view of the world really consists in the fact that true optimism has vanished unperceived from our midst.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Views, Optimism, World

  Albert Schweitzer (1956). “An anthology”

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• Humanity to me is not a mob. A mob is a degeneration of humanity. A mob is humanity going the wrong way.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Humanity, Way, Wrong Way

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• Hysteria and degeneration have always existed; but they formerly showed themselves sporadically, and had no importance in the life of the whole community. It was only the vast fatigue which was experienced by the generation on which the multitudes of discoveries and innovations burst abruptly, imposing on it organic exigencies greatly surpassing its strength, which created favourable conditions under which these maladies could gain ground enormously, and become a danger to civilization.

  Max Nordau

  Discovery, Civilization, Hysteria

  Max Simon Nordau (1895). “Degeneration”, London, Heinemann

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• The domestication (the culture) of man does not go deep--where it does go deep it at once becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The 'savage' (or, in moral terms, the evil man) is a return to nature--and in a certain sense his recovery, his cure from 'culture'.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Christian, Recovery, Men

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2011). “The Will to Power”, p.495, Vintage

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• If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.

  Paul Bremer

  Years, Community, Today

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• A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.

  Agnes Repplier

  Dog, Real, Suffering

  Agnes Repplier (1924). “Under dispute”

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• Remember how many beautiful women there were in the 1950s and 1960s, without any surgery? And now, thanks to degeneration, we have this.

  Valeria Lukyanova

  Beautiful, Barbie, Thanks

  "This Is Not a Barbie Doll. This Is an Actual Human Being". Interview with Michael Idov, www.gq.com. July 12, 2017.

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• Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

  Vaclav Havel

  Lying, People, Support

  Vaclav Havel, John Keane (2016). “The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe”, p.43, Routledge

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