Quotes & Sayings About Decline

Pray tell me what it is," said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and going to the open window, where Monk was looking in, panting and wagging his tail. She leaned her back against the window-frame, and laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their advances. — George Eliot

Though Donald Trump won the presidency in part with the strong support of Catholics and Evangelicals, the idea that someone as robustly vulgar, fiercely combative, and morally compromised as Trump will be an avatar for the restoration of Christian morality and social unity is beyond delusional. He is not a solution to the problem of America's cultural decline, but a symptom of it. The — Rod Dreher

Labour leaders lead us all, though we know they bleed us all. Cheer our new Decline and Fall, Gibbon might have dreamed it all. — Noel Coward

In the summer of 2007, I was sitting in a studio in Dublin, debating with a lay spokesman of the Roman Catholic Church who turned out to be the only believing Christian on a discussion panel of five people. He was a perfectly nice and rather modest logic-chopping polemicist, happy enough to go for a glass of refreshment after the program, and I suddenly felt a piercing stab of pity for him. A generation ago in Ireland, the Church did not have to lower itself in this way. It raised its voice only slightly, and was instantly obeyed by the Parliament, the schools, and the media. It could and did forbid divorce, contraception, the publication of certain books, and the utterance of certain opinions. Now it is discredited and in decline. Its once-absolute doctrines appear ridiculous: — Christopher Hitchens

Plato laments the decline of the oral tradition and the atrophy of memory which writing induces, I at the other end of the Age of the Written Word am impressed by the sturdiness and reliability of words on paper ... The will to record indelibly, to set down stories in permanent words, seems to me akin to the conviction that we are larger than our biologies. — Jonathan Franzen

The professor is stumped about why the decline is happening with the wolves and what, if anything, we can do to help them. You see, the problem is we've let nature take its course here. We observe but don't interfere. Kind of like the Prime Directive in Star Trek. — Marie Zhuikov

The decline of violence may owe something to an expansion of empathy, but it also owes much to harder-boiled faculties like prudence, reason, fairness, self-control, norms and taboos, and conceptions of human rights. This — Steven Pinker

My litmus test of compatibility is 'Tom Cruise.' I hate people who hate Tom Cruise, cultural automatons who at the mention of his name reflexively bridle and say the diminutive thespian and Theta level Scientoligist is 'crazy' and 'a terrible actor'. They hate him because he's easy to hate. They think that despising Tom Cruise's lack of personality and supposed lack of talent is somehow a blow against the bland American Anschluss of the rest of the planet. Tom Cruise may indeed be the Christopher Columbus of the twentieth century, sent off by the kings of Hollywood to prove the new world of International Box Office isn't flat and to find a direct route into the Asian market, but the decline of everything isn't his fault; he's just a cinematic explorer and a damn fine actor. And hating him doesn't make you seditious- it makes you complicit. — Paul Beatty

Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase. — Madame De Stael

in Chicago, which has installed a multimillion-dollar surveillance program with more than eight thousand cameras, the Urban Institute found that the cameras contributed to a 12 percent drop in crime in Humboldt Park but provided no statistically significant decline in crime in West Garfield Park. And — Julia Angwin

In the morn of life we are alert, we are heated in its noon, and only in its decline do we repose. — Walter Savage Landor

The standard of living of the average American has to decline. — Paul Volcker

The period-effects model refers to influences specific to particular points in time - effects thought to be unique economic or demographic circumstances to which any observable fluctuations in population growth or decline may be attributed. — Brian A. Hoey

The homeless embodied the final stage in a decline your life could have tended toward. You did not take them for victims, but for authors of their own lives. — Edouard Leve

It is enough to have been created, to have embodied for a moment the infinite and tumultuously creative spirit. It is infinitely more than enough to have been used, to have been the rough sketch for some perfected creation. Looking into the future, I saw without sorrow, rather with quiet interest, my own decline and fall. — Olaf Stapledon

The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate. — Charles Horton Cooley

We are a country that lacks riches. The Jewish brain, that's what we have. Everything that we've had and will have in this country is the direct and clear product of higher education. If we harm this system, we will drastically decline and cease to exist. — Aaron Ciechanover

I've never understood the need people have to dictate morality to other people. I really don't know what it is. I don't know if it's fear or the belief that they know the only right way. Or maybe they see a lot of social ills and social decline, and they really think they have the elixir for it. — Stephen Chbosky

I've declined every congressional benefit I could decline, federal health insurance, the retirement program, the 403(b) program, which I think is overly generous. I've got self-imposed term limits of six terms if I have the privilege to serve that long. — Scott Rigell

If pale beans bubble for you in a red earthenware pot, you can often decline the dinners of sumptuous hosts. — Martial

Krandall had recently done a paper entitled "The Decline of Ford's Market Share," a serious, pessimistic warning that he had reason to believe had never reached Henry Ford. So Krandall, who was thinking of retiring anyway, seized this opportunity to confront a boss he rather liked. The Ford Company, he told Ford, was not equipped to deal with the Japanese challenge. Not only was it doing poorly, he said, but it might not be able to hold its existing share in the future. Krandall had suspected a short, testy answer, but instead Ford looked at him and agreed. "It may not be long," he said, "before we're selling not just cars but apples. — David Halberstam

In the decline of life shame and grief are of short duration; whether it be that we bear easily what we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we less regard others; or, that we look with slight regard upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of death is about to put an end. — Lyndon B. Johnson

The decline of religious belief,which has all sorts of effects on morals and even on politics because religion has been a tool of politics. But today in Europe it ceases to be a tool, it has very little influence in determining political decisions - — Will Durant

Along with issues like global warming, I think a problem with the world today is population decline. — Talulah Riley

Our nation will prosper or decline in direct proportion to our selection of leaders who are guided by the Holy Spirit. If we fail to select Godly leaders our destiny will surely be as that of the Roman Empire. — Ronald Reagan

Faith, not cowardice, takes the step into unknown territory for the sake of Jesus Christ and His church. Love, not self-preserving protectiveness, sacrifices its own life that others might live. Hope of new life, not resignation to inevitable decline, yields itself up in the quest for a better future. — Darrin Patrick

We have experienced highly challenging global market conditions in the past quarter with significant steel price decline in all regions. — Lakshmi Mittal

Why do the health of the body and the health of the earth decline together? — Wendell Berry

I am so sorry to see the state of reading in such decline. I think it says something really scary and terrible about us as a culture. I think it does have to do with everyone's total global embrace of technology. — Lee Smith

No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. — Wilhelm Reich

Without consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory characteristics of crowds. Its civilisation is now without stability, and at the mercy of every chance. The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts. The civilisation may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front, the work of a long past, but it is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall in at the first storm. To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people. — Gustave Le Bon

Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline. — Martin Jacques

Something extraordinary is happening. Do you sense it? Truly, as obedience and morality decline in the world, the Lord is sending more exceptional spirits to earth. As a body they excel the average capacity of their forebears. Their potential for personal growth and positive contribution is enormous. — Richard G. Scott

As in Northern Ireland, children, shoppers, ordinary working men were all suitable targets. Bombs in department stores and pubs would have even more impact in the context of the widely anticipated social breakdown brought on by industrial decline, high unemployment, rising inflation and an energy crisis. — Ian McEwan

Irish demographics reveal two startling facts: There are around 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish descent, and Ireland today has barely half the population that it had 160 years ago, a decline unmatched in the modern world. These facts are explained and connected by the undeniable social reality of nineteenth-century Ireland - emigration. — Ryan Hackney

You look at most artists, the arc of their career, there's a definite decline at the end. And that decline could set in at any time. In your 50s, or your 60s and 70s if you're lucky. Time goes by fast, and you've got to be busy all the time. — Seth

Deflation is defined as a general decline in prices, with emphasis on the word 'general.' — Ben Bernanke

Significantly, it was Disraeli who said, "What is a crime among the multitude is only a vice among the few" - perhaps the most profound insight into the very principle by which the slow and insidious decline of nineteenth-century society into the depth of mob and underworld morality took place. Since he knew this rule, he knew also that Jews would have no better chances anywhere than in circles which pretended to be exclusive and to discriminate against them; for inasmuch as these circles of the few, together with the multitude, thought of Jewishness as a crime, this "crime" could be transformed at any moment into an attractive "vice." Disraeli's display of eroticism, strangeness, mysteriousness, magic, and power drawn from secret sources, was aimed correctly at this disposition in society. — Hannah Arendt

When I was young I used to read about the decline of Western civilization, and I decided it was something I would like to make a contribution to. — George Carlin

But that closing night at Carnegie was without a hint of decline. — Walter Terry

When the Forbidden Fruit was handed to Adam and Eve, they were allowed the moral choice to accept or decline. I know people who have refused to feast on the money tree. They live simply, within their means, and seem far more content than those who are trying to horde their wealth while clinging to the ladder of 'success,' terrified to let go. That isn't real living. The Puritans rightly saw that as covetousness. — Cal Thomas

Working with lots of old media clients, I've had a front-row seat on the ascension of new social players and the decline of traditional news outlets. And it's clear to me that old media has an awful lot to learn from social media, in particular in five key areas: relevance, distribution, velocity, monetization, and user experience. — Ryan Holmes

Today you are walking in Paris the women are all steeped in blood
It was and I'd rather not remember it was at beauty's decline — Guillaume Apollinaire

The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.
(Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading, Harper's Magazine, February 2008) — Ursula K. Le Guin

Fear not the phantom of death,
My Countrymen, for his greatness
And mercy will refuse to approach
Your smallness; and dread not the
Dagger, for it will decline to be
Lodged in your shallow hearts. — Kahlil Gibran

It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning. — Oswald Chambers

You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode. — Anita Brookner

One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be - though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain - because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone. — Oswald Spengler

It's like the frog that tried to outdo the cow...see, the consequences are reflected in each of us as individuals. A people so oppressed by the West have no mental leisure, they can't do anything worthwhile. They get an education that's stripped to the bare bone, and they're driven with their noses to the grindstone until they're dizzy -- that's why they all end up with nervous breakdowns. Try talking to them -- they're usually stupid. They haven't thought about a thing beyond themselves, that day, that very instant. They're too exhausted to think about anything else; it's not their fault. Unfortunately, exhaustion of the spirit and deterioration of the body come hand-in-hand. And that's not all. The decline of morality has set in too. Look where you will in this country, you won't find one square inch of brightness. It's all pitch black. So what difference would it make... — Soseki Natsume

So much of my self worth was tied with my position. It felt like I was being enveloped in darkness. It was a sense of loss of enthusiasm, a loss of happiness, a significant decline in self worth. — Tom Johnson

For I see not what there is desirable in publick esteeme, were I able to acquire & maintaine it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline. — Isaac Newton

But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. — Immanuel Kant

As homeowners see the value of their homes decline, they become more likely to delay purchases of the big items - like automobiles, electronics and home appliances - that are ballasts of the American economy. When those purchases decline, large manufacturing firms, suddenly short on funds, could begin laying off employees. — Charles Duhigg

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination. — Scott Adams

That the authority of the nation-state itself depended largely on the economic independence and political neutrality of its civil servants becomes obvious in our time; the decline of nations has invariably started with the corruption of its permanent administration and the general conviction that civil servants are in the pay, not of the state, but of the owning classes. — Hannah Arendt

a 2010 University of Michigan study shows that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were thirty years ago, with much of the drop having occurred since 2000. (The study's authors speculate that the decline in empathy is related to the prevalence of social media, reality TV, and "hyper-competitiveness.") — Susan Cain

Most postmodernists blame the decline of the dracono-bardic tradition on the sudden and soaring popularity of the Beatles. — E.K. Johnston

Alzheimer's usually comes later than AIDS, but I decline to call that progress. — Mason Cooley

Europe today is the most secular region in the world. Europe is the only region in the world experiencing population decline. Wherever you turn today the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families. — Jonathan Sacks

We will either bring on another American century, or we are doomed to witness America's decline. — Marco Rubio

A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial say, more than a third from cost or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected. — Benjamin Graham

Sena under the leadership of Uddhav Thackeray has failed. It is a party on the decline, and that decline started the day Maharashtra Navnirman Sena was formed. — Sharad Pawar

What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline. — Theodor Adorno

The most important possession of a country is its population. If this is maintained in health and vigour everything else will follow; if this is allowed to decline nothing, not even great riches, can save the country from eventual ruin. — Albert Howard

I decline to buy repentance at the cost often thousand drachmas. — Demosthenes

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies. — Patricia Highsmith

Many troubled Midwestern towns are grasping for ways to fend off decline and, in some cases, extinction. — Stephen Kinzer

When things flourish they decline. — Lao-Tzu

I use iTunes for downloading music, but I always decline when prompted to update this or that new version. — Rachel Sklar

To that, I say this: a few may not agree, but one of the greatest men to have walked the earth in my lifetime is Nelson Mandela. He and his people suffered tremendously under the apartheid regime, but when he took over the mantle of governing South Africa, he did not vindictively return the favour to the opposition, which would probably have sent South Africa into chaos and terminal decline. Instead he charted a way forward that started with forgiveness and inclusiveness, bringing about a smooth transition instead of possible revenge and bloodshed. Maybe some folk in cricket administration can learn something from the great man. — Michael Holding

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast. — Peter Drucker

What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat — Satish Kumar

My life is a stairway to heaven, not a 'decline into decrepitude. — Jane Fonda

For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: Can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they'll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different worldview. — Mark Steyn

Life, as he conceived of it, was a long decline from a glorious past, and if a reader approaches a newspaper in that spirit, he can find much to confirm him in his belief, particularly if he has never examined any short period of the past in day-to-day detail. — Robertson Davies

A great deal of the American medical community's resources is geared to addressing the cosmetic needs of both women and men whom fear that by showing the deleterious effects of aging their marital relationship is in jeopardy. The most ethical plastic surgeons decline to perform impetuous work; the less ethical, but often the wealthiest professionals, perform all requested work irrespective of the long-term viability of the services rendered. The plastic surgeon's sales pitch is predictable: everyone can receive the face that he or she can afford. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Prominent exploration experts have recently predicted that total world production of liquid oil will peak by about the end of this decade-or a few years later if production does not rise much-and will decline thereafter. — Amory Lovins

...Americans didn't stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off for the green world beyond, so that by the 1970 Census, we had become the first suburban nation in the history of the world. And Detroit led the way, with a population curve up and down just like everywhere else, but with its urban decline a lot steeper over the past sixty years - so typical a place that it only looks like an exception. — Jerry Herron

In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world. The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. Mary no longer loves the contemplative life and Martha no longer loves the active life, Leah is sterile, Rachel has a carnal eye, Cato visits brothels, Lucretius becomes a woman. Everything is on the wrong path. In those days, thank God, I acquired from my master the desire to learn and a sense of the straight way, which remains even when the path is tortuous. — Umberto Eco

We wanted to preserve as many jobs as possible, so when our sales continued to decline in August 2008, we did about a 5 percent reduction of our global staff. But in order not to cut any more jobs, we froze everybody's pay and put a hiring freeze on. — John Mackey

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline. — John Updike

Alice insisted the accelerator had got stuck. She thought of herself as a good driver and hated the idea that anyone would think that the problem was her age. The body's decline creeps like a vine. Day to day, the changes can be imperceptible. You adapt. Then something happens that finally makes it clear that things are no longer the same. The falls didn't do it. The car accident didn't do it. Instead, it was a scam that did. Not long after the car accident, Alice — Atul Gawande

Thank you for your kind invitation. However, as a gay man, I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly. — Wentworth Miller

We've never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don't think it's going to drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though. — Ben Bernanke

The most important domestic challenge facing the U.S. at the close of the twentieth century is the re-creation of fatherhood as avital social role for men. At stake is nothing less than the success of the American experiment. For unless we reverse the trend of fatherlessness, no other set of accomplishments
not economic growth or prison construction or welfare reform or better schools
will succeed in arresting the decline of child well-being and the spread of male violence. To tolerate the trend of fatherlessness is to accept the inevitability of continued social recession. — David Blankenhorn

You think the things you can touch and feel are the things that are real, but they are not. Over time, they all get old and decline. The people, the houses, the rocks and the mountains: one day they will all crumble. This is because they are not as real as the things that last forever. It is another one of the lessons we come to teach. — Kate McGahan

It is almost a general rule that nations do not decline gradually. Instead they fall abruptly from their greatest heights. — Robert Payne

So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.
Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable. — Jude Morgan

In his second Inaugural Address, on March 5, 1821, Monroe admitted at last to a general depression of prices, but only as a means of explaining the great decline in the federal revenue. Despite this, he asserted that the situation of America presented a 'gratifying spectacle.' — Murray Rothbard

In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-century advances in medical care. — Laurie Garrett

A lawyer's empathy for her client deepens when she realizes that she has only seen the last couple of phases of his decline. How hard it must his initial adjustment have been to his loss of freedom? — Ron Suskind

Because people who decline organized leisure activities are deserters from the great common struggle against boredom, and they deserve neither attention nor helmets. — Milan Kundera

In the superman Nietzsche gave the world a conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. But there still remained a problem and it was this: When the superman at last appears on earth, what then? Will there be another super-superman to follow and another super-super-superman after that? In the end, will man become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline come after, with return down the long line, through the superman down to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space? — H.L. Mencken

It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero. — Dick Schaap

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. — Francois Hollande

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 ... Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Life is apogee, apex, decline; life is death - and everything else is open to discussion. — Colin Farrell

As a society we've progressed to a point where it is unacceptable behavior to knock someone down who is acting a fool. I teach my children to use their words when faced with a conflict. That's what civilized people do. All that is fine and good except for one small thing; we've enabled the fools ...
... What if people could expect a measure of instant justice when they were out of order? The acts of thoughtlessness would decline exponentially. If you give people license to be fools then you are left to deal with fools. However, if you put fools on notice then they'll be forced to snap to attention and act right or suffer the consequences. Think of it as an adult spanking. — Aaron Blaylock