Quotes About Decline

As the power of Christianity declined through the centuries that have followed the Reformation, Calvinism played a less and less important part, while the new philosophies of mechanism and rationalism correspondingly increased.

If I'm not comfortable doing something, I'll refuse the role altogether.

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.

As one ages, eventually, no matter what regime you've followed, no matter how fiercely you've fought the fight, good health becomes harder to maintain. It may disappear overnight or simply dwindle, but with every year that passes, the odds shorten.

There was a time in the mid-1950s when the Philippines was in the same league as Japan economically and academically. Fifty years down the road, and we are almost dead last in the ASEAN region.

Labor force participation peaked in early 2000, so its decline began well before the Great Recession. A portion of that decline clearly relates to the aging of the baby boom generation. But the pace of decline accelerated with the recession.

One of the problems with industries that have been in relatively long-term declines is that, very often, the managements in those industries develop a kind of loser mentality. And when you ask them what's wrong with the business, they'll point to extraneous forces.

Housing is a relatively small sector of the economy, and its decline should be self-correcting.

In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jones will not even figure in a footnote. It will be all economics, politics, battles.

No pyramids of comparable quality were ever built again.

Modern man has successfully razed the imaginative landscapes of primal peoples the whole world over. Kill the gods first, slaughter the sacred animals, rewrite the mythologies, and build roads through the holy places. Do all this and watch the people decline. Without souls, they soon die, leaving dead shells, zombie cultures, shambling aimlessly towards oblivion.

It's a grim reality, but the river towns are dying in Mississippi, by a slow exsanguination of people and talent that functions like a wasting disease.

Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

If you were born in Britain after World War II, you see a continuous atmosphere of decline, moral and economic and political.

Most Americans have little idea of how far our nation's worldwide standing had fallen by the end of the Bush administration; no matter how bad you thought it had gotten, it was worse.

I am apoplectic that people no longer expect progress because for so long they have worn the clothes of decline.

Six decades ago, as Mao's Communists seized power, the question in Washington was, 'Who lost China?' Now, as his capitalist descendants stand astride the world stage and Washington worries about decline, it seems to be, 'Who lost America?'

The decline of practical skills, some of them very day-to-day, among a generation of British men is very worrying. They can't put up a shelf, wire a plug, countersink a screw, iron a shirt. They believe it's endearing and cute to be useless, whereas I think it's boring, and everyone's getting sick of it.

If you're at the top, people worship you wherever you go. But when you're dying down, it's difficult to sell tickets!

Trump brings power to those who hate their lack of it, and his message is tonic to communities that have felt nothing but decline for decades.

The Endangered Species Act is the strongest and most effective tool we have to repair the environmental harm that is causing a species to decline.

France is no longer herself when she is folded in on herself, tormented by ignorance and intolerance. The country would plunge into decline if it refused to be itself, if it was afraid of the future, afraid of the world.

American decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster.