Quotes about decline

A collection of quotes on the topic of declination, decline, people, time.

Quotes about decline

“My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person's heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human

Fear, Heart, Personality

“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

“[Fascism] was an explosion against intolerable conditions, against remediable wrongs which the old world failed to remedy. It was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live, and live greatly.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Excerpt from My Life by Oswald Mosley (1968), Ch.16.

Death, People, World

“The East is rising and the West is declining.”

Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China

2020s

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days...
Harvard University address (1978)

Life, World, Courage, Support

“As withered weed through cruell winters tine,
That feeles the warmth of sunny beames reflection,
Liftes up his head, that did before decline
And gins to spread his leafe before the faire sunshine.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 12, stanza 34
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book IV

Feeling, Winter

“Decline of the English Murder”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Essay http://orwell.ru/library/articles/decline/english/e_doem title, Tribune (15 February 1946)

“The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.”

William Makepeace Thackeray book The Luck of Barry Lyndon

The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844).

“All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed — that is, divinized. The history of religion, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

Men, God, Faith, Religion

“The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 6, p. 81

“Knowledge is a collection of facts. Wisdom is the use of knowledge. Without facts there is no knowledge. Without knowledge there is no wisdom. Facts prevent what nothing can cure. Facts are Man's best defense mechanism. Without them men fumble, falter and fail. Without them nations decline and fall. Wisdom wins wars before they start. Knowledge aborts national hostilities. Wisdom obviates racial antipathies. Knowledge effaces religious animosities. Emancipation from bigotry prefaces peace. Intolerance takes all and gives nothing. Peace rewards reciprocal respect and regard. To all Men of Good Will, "Pax Vobiscum!"”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

Facts are Facts (1954)

Wisdom, Men, Hostility, War

“I am constrained to decline the designation of any period or mode as proper for the public manifestation of this reliance. I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.”

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

Response to request from a church organization of New York, on refusing to proclaim a national day of fasting and prayer, in relation to an outbreak of cholera. Correspondence 4:447 (1832); quoted in A Subaltern's Furlough : Descriptive of Scenes in Various Parts of the United States, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia during the Summer and Autumn of 1832 (1833) by Edward Thomas Coke, Ch. 9, p. 145 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/lhbtn:@field(DOCID+@lit(lhbtn0265adiv14)) 1830s Context: While I concur with the Synod in the efficacy of prayer, and in the hope that our country may be preserved from the attacks of pestilence "and that the judgments now abroad in the earth may be sanctified to the nations," I am constrained to decline the designation of any period or mode as proper for the public manifestation of this reliance. I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.

Religion, Feeling, Country

“Financiers flourish only when nations decline.”

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) French diplomat

Reported in, Bernard, J. F., Talleyrand: A Biography. (1973), p. 592

“I wonder, sometimes, whether men and women in fact are capable of learning from history--whether we progress from one stage to the next in an upward course or whether we just ride the cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, ascent and decline.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Women, Men, War, Peace

“The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods… the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195).

If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Life, World, Dreams, Failure

“A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Life

“I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“I was on duty when our submarine went into port in Nassau and tied up at the Prince George Wharf, and I was the officer who accepted an invitation from the governor-general of the Bahamas for our officers and crewmen to attend an official ball to honor the U. S. Navy. There was a more private comment that a number of young ladies would be present with their chaperones. All of us were pleased and excited, and Captain Andrews responded affirmatively. We received a notice the next day that, of course, the nonwhite crewmen would not be included. When I brought this message to the captain, he had the crew assemble in the mess hall and asked for their guidance in drafting a response. After multiple expletives were censored from the message, we unanimously declined to participate. The decision by the crew of the K-1 was an indication of how equal racial treatment had been accepted—and relished. I was very proud of my ship. On leave”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

Decision

“And rising inequality and declining mobility are also bad for our families and social cohesion -- not just because we tend to trust our institutions less, but studies show we actually tend to trust each other less when there’s greater inequality. And greater inequality is associated with less mobility between generations. That means it’s not just temporary; the effects last. It creates a vicious cycle. For example, by the time she turns three years old, a child born into a low-income home hears 30 million fewer words than a child from a well-off family, which means by the time she starts school she’s already behind, and that deficit can compound itself over time.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)

School, Family, Home, Study

“As people age, they confuse changes in themselves with changes in the world, and changes in the world with moral decline—the illusion of the good old days.”

Steven Pinker book The Sense of Style

p 4
The Sense of Style (2014)

People, Age, World, Change

“Before he died, Guru Govind Singh had commissioned Banda Bairagi, a Rajput from Jammu to go to the Punjab and punish the wrong-doers. Banda more than fulfilled his mission. He was joined by fresh formations of the Khalsa and the Hindus at large gave him succour and support. He roamed all over the Punjab, defeating one Muslim army after another in frontal fights as well as in guerilla warfare. Sirhind, where Guru Govind Singh's younger sons had been walled up, was stormed and sacked. The bullies of Islam who had walked with immense swagger till only the other day had to run for cover. Large parts of the Punjab were liberated from Muslim despotism after a spell of nearly seven centuries. The Mughal empire, however, was still a mighty edifice which could mobilize a military force far beyond Banda's capacity to match. Gradually, he had to yield ground and accept defeat as his own following thinned down in battle after battle. He was captured, carried to Delhi in an iron cage and tortured to death in 1716 A. D. Many other members of the Khalsa met the same fate in Delhi and elsewhere. The Muslim governor of the Punjab had placed a prize on every Khalsa head. The ranks of the Khalsa had perforce to suffer a steep decline and go into hiding.”

Banda Singh Bahadur (1670–1716) Sikh military commander

Swarup, Ram, & Goel, S. R. (1985). Hindu-Sikh relationship. (Introduction by S.R. Goel)

Death, Fate, Support, Suffering

“No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect. Far from reversing the slow relative decline of Britain vis-à-vis its main industrial competitors, it accelerated it. We fell further behind them, until by 1979 we were widely dismissed as 'the sick man of Europe'…To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

The Downing Street Years (1993)

Disease, Failure, Country

“It is, however, only in the nineteenth century that one sees men beginning to glory in their ignorance—for to proclaim oneself an agnostic means nothing else—and claiming to forbid others any knowledge to which they themselves have no access; and this marked one stage further in the intellectual decline of the West.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 59

Men, Knowledge

“It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Memoirs (1796)

Idea, Singing

“It often happens that an old family, with traditions that are entirely practical, sober and bourgeois, undergoes in its declining days a kind of artistic transfiguration.”

Thomas Mann book Tristan

Source: Tristan (1902), Ch. 7

Family

“Our object now is to strengthen the ties that bind us to other nations. There may be a great many countries in the world, but there is only one civilization, and if a nation is to achieve progress, she must be a part of this civilization. The Ottoman Empire began to decline the day when, proud of her success against the West, she cut the ties that bound her to the European nations.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

Speech to the press (29 October 1923), quoted in Vakur Versan, 'The Kemalist Reform of Turkish Law and Its Impact', in Jacob M. Landau (ed.), Atatürk and the Modernization of Turkey (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984), p. 247

World, Success, Parting, Country

“The decline of narrative can be seen as an effect of the blossoming of techniques and technologies since the Second World War, Which has shifted emphasis from the ends of action to this means; it can also be seen as an effect of the redeployment of advanced liberal capitalism after its retreat under the protection of Keynesianism during the period of 1930-1960, a renewal that has eliminated the communist alternative and valorized the individual enjoyment of goods and services.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.38

War, World

“There can be no doubt that the youth of today have to be protected against certain poisonous effects inherent in present-day civilization. Five social diseases surround them, even in early childhood. There is the decline in fitness due to modern methods of locomotion; the decline in initiative due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis; the decline in care and skill due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship; the decline in self-discipline due to the ever-present availability of tranquilizers and stimulants, and the decline in compassion, which William Temple called "spiritual death."”

Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) German educator

Quoted by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Colorado Outward Bound's 25th anniversary in 1987; as cited in Leadership the Outward Bound Way (2007), ISBN 159485033X.

Death, Youth, Disease, Childhood

“As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District. Its most recent burial, only last Term, was, to be sure, not fully six feet under: Our decision in Lee v. Weisman conspicuously avoided using the supposed test but also declined the invitation to repudiate it. Over the years, however, no fewer than five of the currently sitting Justices have, in their own opinions, personally driven pencils through the creature's heart (the author of today's opinion repeatedly), and a sixth has joined an opinion doing so. The secret of the Lemon test's survival, I think, is that it is so easy to kill. It is there to scare us (and our audience) when we wish it to do so, but we can command it to return to the tomb at will. Such a docile and useful monster is worth keeping around, at least in a somnolent state; one never knows when one might need him.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384, 398-99 (1993) (concurring) (citations omitted).
1990s

Children, Secret, School, Justice

“Is it not clear that with all this we are bound to feel ill at ease in an age that likes to claim the distinction of being the most humane, the mildest, and the most righteous age that the sun has ever seen? It is bad enough that precisely when we hear these beautiful words we have the ugliest suspicions. What we find in them is merely an expression — and a masquerade — of a profound weakening, of weariness, of old age, of declining energies. What can it matter to us what tinsel the sick may use to cover up their weakness? Let them parade it as their virtue; after all, there is no doubt that weakness makes one mild, oh so mild, so righteous, so inoffensive, so "humane!"”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 377
The Gay Science (1882)

Age, Beauty, Feeling, Sun

“They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where — because of our past excesses — it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don't believe that. And, I don't believe you do either. That is why I am seeking the presidency. I cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity. I don't agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to other hands. I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Official Announcement http://www.reaganlibrary.com/reagan/speeches/intent.asp of being a candidate for U.S. President (13 November 1979) 1970s

Children, People, World, Dreams

“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 (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 43e

Nature, Teachers

“In this way, then, by the renewal of the ceaseless working of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in us, in its various stages of progress, shall we be able at some future time perhaps, although with difficulty, to behold the holy and the blessed life, in which (as it is only after many struggles that we are able to reach it) we ought so to continue, that no satiety of that blessedness should ever seize us; but the more we perceive its blessedness, the more should be increased and intensified within us the longing for the same, while we ever more eagerly and freely receive and hold fast the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But if satiety should ever take hold of any one of those who stand on the highest and perfect summit of attainment, I do not think that such an one would suddenly be deposed from his position and fall away, but that he must decline gradually and little by little, so that it may sometimes happen that if a brief lapsus take place, and the individual quickly repent and return to himself, he may not utterly fall away, but may retrace his steps, and return to his former place, and again make good that which had been lost by his negligence.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

On First Principles, Bk. 1, ch. 3; par. 8
On First Principles

Life, Way, Thinking, Time

“And finally, rising inequality and declining mobility are bad for our democracy. Ordinary folks can’t write massive campaign checks or hire high-priced lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field in their favor at everyone else’s expense. And so people get the bad taste that the system is rigged, and that increases cynicism and polarization, and it decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of self-government.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)

People, Democracy, Parting

“As you have invited me, I cannot come, for I have made a rule to decline all invitations; but I will come the next day.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Quoted in Beatrice Hatch, "Lewis Carroll", Strand Magazine (April 1898), p. 422

“There are two fundamentally different ways for the strong to bend down to the weak, for the rich to help the poor, for the more perfect life to help the “less perfect.” This action can be motivated by a powerful feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one’s own life and existence. All this unites into the clear awareness that one is rich enough to share one’s being and possessions. Love, sacrifice, help, the descent to the small and the weak, here spring from a spontaneous overflow of force, accompanied by bliss and deep inner calm. Compared to this natural readiness for love and sacrifice, all specific “egoism,” the concern for oneself and one’s interest, and even the instinct of “self-preservation” are signs of a blocked and weakened life. Life is essentially expansion, development, growth in plenitude, and not “self-preservation,” as a false doctrine has it. Development, expansion, and growth are not epiphenomena of mere preservative forces and cannot be reduced to the preservation of the “better adapted.” … There is a form of sacrifice which is a free renunciation of one’s own vital abundance, a beautiful and natural overflow of one’s forces. Every living being has a natural instinct of sympathy for other living beings, which increases with their proximity and similarity to himself. Thus we sacrifice ourselves for beings with whom we feel united and solidary, in contrast to everything “dead.” This sacrificial impulse is by no means a later acquisition of life, derived from originally egoistic urges. It is an original component of life and precedes all those particular “aims” and “goals” which calculation, intelligence, and reflection impose upon it later. We have an urge to sacrifice before we ever know why, for what, and for whom! Jesus’ view of nature and life, which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables in fragments and hidden allusions, shows quite clearly that he understood this fact. When he tells us not to worry about eating and drinking, it is not because he is indifferent to life and its preservation, but because he sees also a vital weakness in all “worrying” about the next day, in all concentration on one’s own physical well-being. … all voluntary concentration on one’s own bodily wellbeing, all worry and anxiety, hampers rather than furthers the creative force which instinctively and beneficently governs all life. … This kind of indifference to the external means of life (food, clothing, etc.) is not a sign of indifference to life and its value, but rather of a profound and secret confidence in life’s own vigor and of an inner security from the mechanical accidents which may befall it. A gay, light, bold, knightly indifference to external circumstances, drawn from the depth of life itself—that is the feeling which inspires these words! Egoism and fear of death are signs of a declining, sick, and broken life. …
This attitude is completely different from that of recent modern realism in art and literature, the exposure of social misery, the description of little people, the wallowing in the morbid—a typical ressentiment phenomenon. Those people saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the holiness of “life” even in a bug.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 88-92

Love, Life, Death, People

“I declined to be made Pontifex Maximus in succession to a colleague still living, when the people tendered me that priesthood which my father had held. Several years later I accepted that sacred office when he at last was dead who, taking advantage of a time of civil disturbance, had seized it for himself, such a multitude from all Italy assembling for my election, in the consulship of Publius Sulpicius and Gaius Valgius, as is never recorded to have been in Rome before.”

Augustus book Res Gestae Divi Augusti

Res Gestae Divi Augusti

People, Time, Success, Dead

“Reading Decline of the West I learned that in Spengler’s view ours was a Faustian civilization and that we, the Jews, were Magians, the survivors and representatives of an earlier type, totally incapable of comprehending the Faustian spirit that had created the great civilization of the West. … What Magians were to Faustians, Faustians might very well be to Americans.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Part I, p. 26
A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

Learning, Reading

“When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, — no loss by it any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, "If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong" (1864)

Men, War, Hope, Color

“There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book
Context: There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing, first seeing the distance timing and the background timing. This is the main thing in strategy. It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain.

Life, Way, Time

“Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these: "Dear madam, I decline."”

J. M. Barrie book The Little White Bird

And if David asks why I decline, I explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman.
"Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her birthday, and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer.
Source: The Little White Bird (1902), Ch. 1

Boy

“It had been a moving, tranquil apotheosis, immersed in the transfiguring sunset glow of decline and decay and extinction.”

Thomas Mann book Tristan

Source: Tristan (1902), Ch. 10
Context: It had been a moving, tranquil apotheosis, immersed in the transfiguring sunset glow of decline and decay and extinction. An old family, already grown too weary and too noble for life and action, had reached the end of its history, and its last utterances were sounds of music: a few violin notes, full of the sad insight which is ripeness for death.

“I do not wish to be a king; I am not anxious to be rich; I decline military command; I detest fornication; I am not impelled by an insatiable love of gain to go to sea; I do not contend for chaplets; I am free from a mad thirst for fame; I despise death; I am superior to every kind of disease; grief does not consume my soul.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Original: (la) Regnare nolo: ditescere non libet: prae turam recuso, scortationem odi: navigare ob insatiabilem avaritiam non cupio: de coronis consequendis non dimico: liber sum ab insana gloria cupiditate: mortem contemno: guovis morbi genere superior sum: maror animum non peredit.
Source: Address to the Greeks, Chapter XI, as translated by J. E. Ryland

Soul, Love, Making love, Madness

“All things must in equity again decline into that whence they have their origin for they must give satisfaction and atonement for injustice each in the order of time.”

Anaximander book On Nature

On Nature, as quoted by Friedrich Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, from Thales to the Present Time (1885) Vol. 1, p. 35. https://books.google.com/books?id=BW5YAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA35

Time

“… status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Wealth

“I don't know if people have gotten ruder or if my tolerance level has declined.”

Tim Gunn (1953) American actor and fashion consultant

People

“We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. Falling into an interminable ennui.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Hope, Travel

“Ranger declined the butterscotch pudding, not wanting to disrupt the consistency of his blood sugar level. I had two puddings and coffee, choosing to keep my pancreas at peak performance. Use it or lose it is my philosophy.”

Janet Evanovich Three to Get Deadly

Source: Three to Get Deadly

Coffee

“The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

People

“Declining from the public ways, walk in unfrequented paths.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

Symbol 5
The Symbols

Way

“The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Men, Knowledge

“Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.”

Charles Nodier (1780–1844) French author

Source: Smarra & Trilby

Mood, Autumn

“For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Love

“Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Democracy

“The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.”

Fannie Flagg (1944) American actress, comedian and author

Source: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Life, Behavior

“This is our turn at the wheel, and history will judge us based on how we handle it. Decline is a choice, but so is liberty.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 16

History

“The decline of Indian Buddhism was centrally due to the fact that it never offered the Indian laity a complete religion. Early Buddhism knew no ceremonies for birth and death, marriage, illness, and other critical turns of private life… Only for the community of monks did Buddhism provide a complete and well-defined way of life. …But Brahmins were needed for all the ordinary crises in life, ready with their rites and sacred formulas to ward off danger or minimize the damage. This elemental fact assured the survival of Brahminism in India.”

William H. McNeill book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

Life, Death, Marriage, Religion

“The decline in natural-gas revenues has been dramatic and the degree to which we are dependent on oil revenues, it is time for us to consider an increase in corporate and personal tax.”

Peter Lougheed (1928–2012) Canadian politician

NDP releases "extremist of the Day" number 1 http://www.albertandp.ca/ndp_releases_extremist_of_the_day_number_1, quoted in the Edmonton Journal on May 11, 2011, Alberta's NDP (April 9, 2015)

Nature, Time, Dependency, Personality

“Old-boy networks, alumni giving, affirmative action, sports, and diversity have pretty much put an end to classical meritocratic admissions. That decline of standards in admissions is perversely ironic, because at about the same time, a new campus ethos of grade inflation was predicated on the self-important notion that if you were smart enough to get into Princeton or Harvard, then Harvard and Princeton would make the necessary adjustments and concessions to make sure you graduated. The result of self-congratulation is that a Stanford graduate now usually knows less history than his Hillsdale counterpart. A successful self-made businessman can know a lot more about the economy than does a Harvard M. B. A.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The Deflation of the Academic Brand (2018)

History, Boy, Sport, Time

“The free creativeness of mind is possible because, […] the world ultimately exists, not of material stuff, but of patterns, of organization, the evolution of which involves no absolute creation of an alien world of material from nothing. The purely structural character of reality thus helps to render possible and intelligible the free creativeness of life and mind, … The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures … Life and mind thus appear as products of the cosmic decline, … Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable running down of the solar system. Life and mind, […] are thus reduced to a very casual and inferior status in the cosmic order […] – a transient and embarrassed phantom in an alien, if not hostile universe. […] The human spirit is not a pathetic, wandering phantom of the universe, […] but meets with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts expounding a confrontation of opposites in his presidential address to the British Association in September 1931, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 232-234

Life, Hostility, Fate, World

“The clustering of technological innovation in time and space helps explain both the uneven growth among nations and the rise and decline of hegemonic powers.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Three, Dynamics Of Political Economy, p. 109

Time, Help

“For years, whenever I saw Mubarak, he reminded me of a mummy. He spent a considerable time each day to “prepare” himself. That meant dying his hair and eyebrows jet black, and applying rouge to his cheeks to make them look rosy, in more or less the same way Egyptian mummy makers did with dead pharaohs. He also wore heels to look taller and used a corset to keep his belly in. Despite declining eyesight, he shunned glasses in public. Even in his 80s, he wanted to appear alive and young, just as pharaohs had done. Mubarak’s attempts at securing eternal youth were faintly comical and ultimately harmless. What was not comical and certainly harmless was the mummification of his regime.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Curse of the mummy" http://nypost.com/2011/02/13/curse-of-the-mummy/, New York Post (February 13, 2011). New York Post

Youth, Way, Appearance, Time

“As the French say, aimer est souffrir, to love is to suffer, and therefore, to say that love is essential to the Being of God is to say that in one way or another suffering is essential to his nature. That is to say something our forefathers would have declined to accept. They would have retorted that God, as Father, must be above or beyond suffering. If, however, we take seriously the declaration "God is love," how can we avoid the entailment that suffering is essential to the divine Being?”

Geddes MacGregor

He Who Lets Us Be: A Theology of Love (1975), p. 4

Love, God, Way, Nature

“My father was a picture of courage in terms of his war service and strength, and yet in his decline, I learned primarily negative lessons. I learned what not to do.”

Bill de Blasio (1961) American politician and mayor of New York City

said in an interview quoted by Javier C. Hernandez of The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/nyregion/from-his-fathers-decline-de-blasio-learned-what-not-to-do.html.

War, Courage, Learning

“I have always used rather large execution squads, since I declined to use men who were specialists for shots in the neck (Genickschussspezialisten). Each squad shot for about one hour and was then replaced. The persons who still had to be shot were assembled near the place of the execution, and were guarded by members of those squads, which at the moment did not take part in the executions.”

Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 157 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

Men, Parting, Personality

“The first impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in proportion as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has often been more money lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the highest honours have frequently been bestowed on artists whose names are scarcely now known.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Lecture, Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (25 July 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Money, Art, Nature

“The state, [Kierkegaard] argues, bears a direct relation to numbers. When a state decays, numbers decline and the state disappears. The whole concept is void. The relation of Christianity to numbers is different. A single Christian gives it reality. Christianity bears indeed an inverse relation to numbers. When all become Christians, the concept of Christianity is void. The concept is indeed a polemical one. One can be a Christian only in opposition. When opposition is suppressed, there is no more sense in saying “Christian.” Christendom has astutely abolished Christianity by making us all Christians. … In Christendom there is not the slightest idea of what Christianity is. People cannot see or understand that Christianity has been abolished by its propagation. Again, history probably does not offer any other example of a religion being abolished by reason of its success.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), pp. 35-36

People, Religion, History, Idea

“There is a dance of death in the West and actual death in the Middle East, courtesy of the Islamofascists. … The radical Muslims are on the warpath and they are against everyone else. They are against Muslims who are not as fanatical. They are against the members of all other religions. They think they are going to take us back to some pristine religious period in human history that never actually occurred. It's all complete rubbish. These "faith warriors" live lower than the pigs they despise. They kidnap and rape 8-year-old girls and say the Quran authorizes it. They're not purists. They're killers. They're Nazis in head scarfs. They aren't leading a religious revival. They're trying to take us back to a state of barbarism that has been extinct for 1,200 years. This is a barbaric revolution… Why would any government bring in unvetted Muslim immigrants at a time like this? It would seem that only an insane prince would do this to his country. But Obama is not insane. He's stoned. He's stoned on the orthodoxy of the progressive left. Obama and his supporters are drunk on their ideology. They think they're going to create a progressive utopia by continuing their attack on all Western values. This is precisely how great civilizations of the past declined and eventually fell. They rejected the values that made them great and degenerated into narcissism and selfishness. They kept on partying until they were too weak to defend themselves. Then, the unthinkable happened. They fell.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

A dance of death in the West http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/a-dance-of-death-in-the-west/, excerpt from Government Zero. Government Zero: No Borders, No Language, No Culture (2015)

Death, Faith, Religion, History

“The arrival of Wallace Hartley’s body became a focal point of national grief. This young man not only represented all who had died on the Titanic, but also the values that the British feared were in decline.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p.162

Fear

“Now that the once omnipotent Liberal party has so declined, it is hard to realise how formidable it was in 1911—especially in Scotland. Its dogmas were so completely taken for granted that their presentation partook less of argument than of a tribal incantation. Mr. Gladstone had given it an aura of earnest morality, so that its platforms were also pulpits and its harangues had the weight of sermons. Its members seemed to assume that their opponents must be lacking either in morals or mind. The Tories were the "stupid" party; Liberals alone understood and sympathised with the poor; a working man who was not a Liberal was inaccessible to reason, or morally corrupt, or intimidated by laird or employer. I remember a lady summing up the attitude thus: Tories may think they are better born, but Liberals know that they are born better.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

Stupidity, Thinking

“I said years ago that I would rather be the man who helped on a rational scheme which should secure the comfort of old age than I would be a general who had won ever so many victories in the field. These are, to me, the two most tragic sights in the world—a man who is able to work, and anxious to work, and who cannot get work; and the other tragic sight is that of a man who has worked until his eyes have become dim, and his natural force has become abated, and he is left to spend the declining years of a life that has been so nobly used, so honourably used, in straits, difficulties, and hardships.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech in Manchester (4 July 1895), quoted in 'Mr. Morley In Manchester', The Times (5 July 1895), p. 10.

Life, Age, World, Nature

“It is impossible to understand the American public without taking into account the tremendous psychological effect of bringing up a generation of people in a daily environment of advertising. It is impossible to escape the advertising man; his sales talk assaults us in the morning newspaper, in the street car, with billboards along the highways, and in his shameless use of the radio. This means that from morning till night, in the midst of our work as in our recreation, we live constantly in an atmosphere of intellectual shoddiness. Every popular prejudice and vulgar conceit is played upon and pandered to in the interests of salesmanship. Everywhere material interests and herd opinion are strengthened to the loss of personal independence. The tendency is to think and speak for effect rather than out of one's inner life. There is a marked decline the ability to play with ideas, or to live the spiritual life for its own sake. Hence a decline in civilization of interest, humor and urbanity. Advertising tends to make mechanized barbarians of us all.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), pp. 29-30

Life, People, Cars, Idea

“The premise of $600+ mobile device sales as a mainstream purchase by ordinary Americans, never mind overpriced $300 plastic-cased watches, appears to be a fantasy dream. The iFemineProduct has quite-clearly peaked and started its decline …”

Karl Denninger American businessman

Bubble, Meet Pin http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230072 in The Market Ticker (28 April 2015)

Dreams, Appearance

“Wherever we look the dreadful disintegration of the bridges of life, the capillaries and the bodies they have created, is evident, which has been caused by the mechanical and mindless work of man, who has torn away the soul from the Earth's blood - water. The more the engineer endeavors to channel water, of whose spirit and nature he is today still ignorant, by the shortest and straightest route to the sea, the more the flow of water weighs into the bends, the longer its path and the worse the water will become. The spreading of the most terrible disease of all, of cancer, is the necessary consequence of such unnatural regulatory works. These mistaken activities - our work - must legitimately lead to increasingly widespread unemployment, because our present methods of working, which have a purely mechanical basis, are already destroying not only all of wise Nature's formative processes, but first and foremost the growth of the vegetation itself, which is being destroyed even as it grows. The drying up of mountain springs, the change in the whole pattern of motion of the groundwater, and the disturbance in the blood circulation of the organism - Earth - is the direct result of modern forestry practices. The pulse-beat of the Earth was factually arrested by the modern timber production industry. Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its forests. The forest is the habitat of water and as such the habitat of life processes too, whose quality declines as the organic development of the forest is disturbed. Ultimately, due to a law which functions with awesome constancy, it will slowly but surely come around to our turn. Our accustomed way of thinking in many ways, and perhaps even without exception, is opposed to the true workings of Nature. Our work is the embodiment of our will. The spiritual manifestation of this work is its effect. When such work is carried out correctly, it brings happiness, but when carried out incorrectly, it assuredly brings misery.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

Life, Death, People, Disease

“To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation, is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilisation and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea. It was once universally admitted and approved; it is now necessarily upon the decline.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Vol. 2, bk. 7, ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Idea, Universe, Science

“Mr Turnbull declined this proposition so I advised that I would have no alternative but to resign from the Shadow Cabinet as I was not able to support the CPRS legislation”

Nick Minchin (1953) Australian politician

CRN Online http://www.crn.com.au/News/161485,minchin-quits-shadow-communications-portfolio.aspx

Support

“In order to complete the history of the human mind, and attain to a perfect knowledge of its nature and operations, we must contemplate man in all those various situations wherein he has been placed. We must follow him in his progress through the different stages of society, as he gradually advances from the infant state of civil life toward its maturity and decline.”

William Robertson (historian) (1721–1793) Scottish historian, minister of religion, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh

The History of America, Vol. I (1777), Book IV, pp. 281–282

Life, History, Nature, Knowledge

“If you look at any institution in history – look at the Roman Empire – anything in history, and what it looks like when it’s peaking. Look at Apple, and how can you say it’s not peaking? … The thing is, it may take another year or two before it starts to decline, but it has to – everything does.”

Trip Hawkins (1953) American businessman

Quoted in "Trip Hawkins On Apple", Edge Online, 2011-08-02

History

“On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Rider Haggard: Still Riding", p. 29
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

“It might be argued that civilization is nothing else, that is to say: the tendency of personal authority to decline towards zero.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It" https://web.archive.org/web/20140327090001/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/articles/12321 (2013) (original emphasis)

Personality

“Because demography is concerned with human affairs and human populatlons it is possible, in principle, to consider demography as a sub-ﬁeld of many other subjects. It provided the scope of any particular subject-ﬁeld like anthropology, genetics, ecology, economics, sociology, etc., and is deﬁned in a sufﬁciently comprehensive manner. While not denying the possibility of considering demography as a sub-ﬁeld of one or another subject, at least for certain special purposes, it is suggested that demography should be logically viewed as the totality of convergent and inter-related factors and topics which (although these could be, spearately, the concern of many diﬂ'erent subjects like genetics and anthropology, sociology, education, psychology. economics, social and political affairs etc.) jointly, together with their mutual inter-actions, form the determinants as well as the consequences of growth (or decline), changes in composition, territorial movements, and social mobility of population in different geographical regions or in the world as a whole, at any given period of time, or over diﬂ'erent periods of time. Such a view would supply an aggregative, inter-related, and mutually interacting system of all those factors which have any inﬂuence over, or are inﬂuenced by, demographic or population changes over space and time.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

World, Education, Change, Time

“When citizens are relatively equal, politics has tended to be fairly democratic. When a few individuals hold enormous amounts of wealth, democracy suffers. The reason for this pattern is simple. Through campaign contributions, lobbying, influence over public discourse, and other means, wealth can be translated into political power. When wealth is highly concentrated—that is, when a few individuals have enormous amounts of money—political power tends to be highly concentrated, too. The wealthy few tend to rule. Average citizens lose political power. Democracy declines.”

Benjamin Page (1939) Professor of Decision Making

Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (University of Chicago Press: 2017), p. 19

Money, Democracy, Suffering, Wealth

“When a strong central authority protects borders and reduces internal crime, people have little need for fortified dwellings, although the rulers may build walls and towers to define legitimate residents and defend the country against external threats. When central authority breaks down, however, individuals are more likely to fortify their homes. The presence of castles in the landscape indicates a decline in stability and peace.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Overview: Castles in Context
Medieval castles (2005)

People, Peace, Home, Strong

“The classical view of dinosaurs presents a perplexing problem. The group of vertebrates which dominated the land before the rise of the dinosaurs were the synapsids, the mammal-like reptiles… Most paleontologists have believed that the locomotion and physiology of these mammal-like synapsids were more similar to those of active, warm-blooded mammals than to sluggish modern lizards or alligators. Surprisingly, though, when the first dinosaurs and their near relatives appeared in the Triassic period, the synapsids began to decline and soon became extinct. The dinosaurs then ruled the land unchallenged for over 100 million years while the early mammals, the surviving descendants of the synapsids, remained very small in size and number. Only after the dinosaurs suddenly disappeared about 70 million years ago did the mammals develop into the great variety of dominant land vertebrates we have today. The problem is this: if the later synapsids were such splendidly advanced animals with the improved physiology of mammals, and if dinosaurs were slow and sluggish, why were the mammal-like synapsids exterminated in competition with the first dinosaurs? And why didn't the mammals achieve a more significant diversification during the dinosaurs' reign?”

Robert T. Bakker (1945) American paleontologist

"The Superiority of Dinosaurs", Discovery 3(2),(1968) 11–22
The Superiority of Dinosaurs (1968)

Problem, Appearance, Animals

“I set off in yoga seventy years ago when ridicule, rejection, and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India. Indeed If I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect. At one time I was asked to become a sannyasin and renounce the world, but I declined. I wanted to live as an ordinary householder with all the trials and tribulations of life and to take my yoga practice r to average people who share my life with me the common life of work, marriage and children. I was blessed with all three…”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

Life, Marriage, Children, People

“Riots were also the most virulent symptoms to date of another, and in some ways graver, national disorder — the decline in respect for public authority and the rule of law in America. Far from being a great society, our is becoming a lawless society.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1960s, What Has Happened to America? (1967)

Law, Way

“International trade in goods and services has expanded steadily over the past six decades thanks to declines in shipping and communication costs, globally negotiated reductions in government trade barriers, the widespread outsourcing of production activities, and a greater awareness of foreign cultures and products. New and better communications technologies, notably the Internet, have revolutionized the way people in all countries obtain and exchange information.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Paul R. Krugman, Maurice Obstfeld, and Marc J. Melitz, International Economics: Theory & Policy, 9th edition (2012)

People, Way, Communication, Past

“I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Postscript to the Outsider (1967), p. 3

World

“I do not mean to suggest that all those who call themselves monetarists make this unconscious assumption that an inflation involves this uniform rise of prices. But we may distinguish two schools of monetarism. The first would prescribe a monthly or annual increase in the stock of money just sufficient, in their judgment, to keep prices stable. The second school (which the first might dismiss as mere inflationists) wants a continuous increase in the stock of money sufficient to raise prices steadily by a "small" amount—2 or 3 per cent a year. These are the advocates of a "creeping" inflation. … I made a distinction earlier between the monetarists strictly so called and the "creeping inflationists." This distinction applies to the intent of their recommended policies rather than to the result. The intent of the monetarists is not to keep raising the price "level" but simply to keep it from falling, i. e., simply to keep it "stable." But it is impossible to know in advance precisely what uniform rate of money-supply increase would in fact do this. The monetarists are right in assuming that in a prospering economy, if the stock of money were not increased, there would probably be a mild long-run tendency for prices to decline. But they are wrong in assuming that this would necessarily threaten employment or production. For in a free and flexible economy prices would be falling because productivity was increasing, that is, because costs of production were falling. There would be no necessary reduction in real profit margins. The American economy has often been prosperous in the past over periods when prices were declining. Though money wage-rates may not increase in such periods, their purchasing power does increase. So there is no need to keep increasing the stock of money to prevent prices from declining. A fixed arbitrary annual increase in the money stock "to keep prices stable" could easily lead to a "creeping inflation" of prices.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money, School, Past

“I think this [Obama] administration, if its policies were pursued for an extended period of time, would take us into decline, but there's nothing wrong with this country that a real president couldn't cure.”

John R. Bolton (1948) American lawyer and diplomat

"The Man with the Mustache"

Thinking, Time, Country

“Would the delicate ladies who devour sanguinary beef-steaks like to see their sons working as slaughtermen? If not, then they have no right to put this task upon some other woman's son. We have no right to impose upon a fellow-citizen work which we ourselves should decline to do. It may be said that we force no one to undertake this abominable means of livelihood; but that is a mere tergiversation, for in eating this horrible food we are making a demand that some one shall brutalize himself, that some one shall degrade himself below the level of humanity.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism (1913), p. 27

Food

“So the future depends not only on what we do but on what other powers do. Will they join in the nuclear arms race or save their resources for later, more renumerative uses? Will they increase their productivity while we succumb to inflation and its social and economic consequences? Will they live in harmony at home while we remain riven by factionalism and terrorized by crime? Most important of all, will they choose their goals wisely and pursue them relentlessly while we flounder in aimlessness or exhaust ourselves in internecine struggles? These matters are quite as important as the decline of absolute American power in determining the equilibrium of international relations in the 1970s. One thing is sure: the international challenge tends to merge more and more with the domestic challenge until the two become virtually indistinguishable. The threats from both sources are directed at the same sources of national power which provide strength both for our national security and for our domestic welfare. It is clear, I believe, that we cannot overcome abroad and fail at home, or succeed at home and succumb abroad. To progress toward the goals of our security and welfare we must advance concurrently on both foreign and domestic fronts by means of integrated national power responsive to a unified national will.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Closing words, p. 421-422
Swords and Plowshares (1972)

Home, Future, Dependency

“One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the 'inner contradictions' of such a system.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 5, A Defence Of Politics Against Technology, p. 94.

Appearance, Time

“The last 20 years have· seen an enormous growth of institutions devoted to anthropological enterprises, membership within the discipline, and students, text books, and paraphernalia. From a tiny scholarly group that could easily be fitted into a couple of buses, and most of whom knew each other, we have grown into a group of tremendous, anonymous milling crowds, meeting at large hotels where there are so many sessions that people do well to find those of their colleagues who are interested in the same specialty. Today we look something like the other social science disciplines, suffering some of the same malaise, and becoming cynical about slave markets and worried when grants and jobs seem to be declining.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Changing Styles of Anthropological Work, 1973, p. 1

People, Books, Suffering, Science

“Capital, explaining the origins of the capitalist mode of production, points towards the inevitable historical decline and fall of this same social system. An economic theory based upon the historical relativity of every economic system, its strict limitation in time, tactlessly reminds Messrs the capitalists, their hangers-on and their apologists that capitalism itself is a product of history. It will perish in due course as it once was born. A new social form of economic organization will then take the place of the capitalist one: it will function according to other laws than those which govern the capitalist economy.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Introduction to Capital. Introduction to volume 1 (1976)

Law, History, Time

“No one likes to see redundancies at home at the same time as he sees a surge of imports from abroad. The temptation to succumb to political pressure, to make a special case or to give respite is often overwhelming. But to do so, except in response to clearly unfair trading practices, is to court disaster. The temporary measure frequently becomes the permanent fixture and the special case, a precedent for more. And by shielding industry from fair competition in the short-term, long term decline is guaranteed.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

Speech in London (21 May, 1985).

Home, Time

“During World War II it was exciting and unexpected for Hayek to find someone else, from Vienna, who was interested in many of the same topics that he was. The Open Society and Its Enemies has three main parts, on Plato, Hegel, and Marx. The next main chapters in Hayek’s uncompleted “The Abuse and Decline of Reason,” on which he was at work then, were to be on Hegel and Marx. In addition, Popper’s scholarly style was similar to Hayek’s, with extremely extensive notes.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

War, World, Parting

“We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the constitution.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheaton) 264, 387 (1821); with this sentence Marshall hold that the United States Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction to hear appeals from a state court in a case between a state and its own citizens, even if the case involved interpretation of a federal statute.

Exercises