“The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.”

— Camille Paglia

Last update Nov. 28, 2025. History

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Camille Paglia326

American writer 1947

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“The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed.”

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Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 427.

“That God existed before there were human beings on Earth, that He holds the entire world, believers and non-believers, in His omnipotent hand for eternity, and that He will remain enthroned on a level inaccessible to human comprehension long after the Earth and everything that is on it has gone to ruins; those who profess this faith and who, inspired by it, in veneration and complete confidence, feel secure from the dangers of life under protection of the Almighty, only those may number themselves among the truly religious.”

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“If… the motion of the earth were circular, it would be violent and contrary to nature, and could not be eternal, since … nothing violent is eternal …. It follows, therefore, that the earth is not moved with a circular motion.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

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“Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones,
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones.”

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Age of Bronze, Stanza 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.”

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Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

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“Domestic slavery, combined with systems of foreign conquest and usurpation, ruined the empires of antiquity.”

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“If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go”

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“Elements of empirical language are manipulated in their rigidity, as if they were elements of a true and revealed language. The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Jargon der Eigentlichkeit [Jargon of Authenticity] (1964), p. 7

“On this new earth, cleansed and renovated—this eternal new earth—we will fulfill our eternal purpose for God. It is heaven on earth—always better.”

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Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 108

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