Quotes About Degeneration

The Chinese had this empire-degeneration mambo wired. They actually devised a formula for it, since after several centuries a pattern emerged that was so regular you could pretty much set your sundial by it: Repeat, ad nauseum, for thousands of years. It's

Now it must be taken for granted that simplicity of life and thought is the highest and sanest ideal for civilization and culture, that when a civilization loses simplicity and the sophisticated do not return to unsophistication, civilization becomes increasingly full of troubles and degenerates. Man then becomes the slave of the ideas, thoughts, ambitions and social systems that are his own product.

The most widely raised type of silkworm, the larva of the 'Bombyx mori', no longer exists anywhere in a natural state. As my encyclopedia poignantly puts it: 'The legs of the larvae have degenerated, and the adults no longer fly'.

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 masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

El principal problema es que la mayoría de los comentaristas están acostumbrados a considerar a las escuelas espirituales como "sistemas", más o menos similares, y que dependen del dogma y el ritual: en especial de la repetición y la aplicación de presiones continuas y uniformes sobre sus seguidores. El camino sufi, excepto en formas degeneradas que no deben clasificarse como súficas, difiere totalmente de eso.

To the man who has begun to hate himself the gate to degeneration has already opened; and the same is true of a nation.

Tolkien regretted the degeneration of real curiosity and enthusiasm, and called for research motivated by love of knowledge rather than hunger for a job.

No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate--like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history--until it degenerates into fables.

How often something starts off as noble, and then warps, corrupts, takes on a life of its own. Becomes a creature in a black cloak.

Because the aurochs went extinct in the 1600s, recent in evolutionary terms, Heck felt sure he could reconstruct it, and in so doing save it, too, from racial degeneration. He dreamt that, alongside the swastika, the bull might become synonymous with Nazism. Some drawings of the era showed the aurochs and a swastika joined in an emblem of ideological suavity combined with ferocious strength.

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

The ability of individuals to extract wealth from society by profiting from land also leads to cultural degeneration and a loss of social cohesion over time... In general, as the value of land increases, the return on capital tends to decrease comparatively, which discourages business owners from investing in capital goods and private enterprise... Resources flow away from endeavours that can create jobs, produce wealth, and enliven society, and instead flow into land speculation.

common symptom of atrophy is nervous exhaustion.

Eradication of the Best' - we can hardly find a better explanation for decline.

They had an almost irresistible tendency to degenerate into a kind of lolloping amble.

Change is the nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity. (P4)

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.