Deteriorating Quotes & Sayings

One mark of a deteriorating society is when people cannot discern between truth and lies. Another is that they don't care and will believe whatever their itching ears want to hear. — Cal Thomas

The truth is, the liberal policies of the elite class have done little to improve the lot of those who depend so much on them. In America's black communities, where the goodies have been flowing for decades, rather than seeing improvements in terms of upward mobility, we are seeing deteriorating family structure, increases in violent crimes, growing poverty, and growing dependence. Even with such a blatant record of failure, there is slavish devotion to the elite class who continue to promise more goodies in exchange for votes. — Benjamin Carson

When I was twenty-three I began seeing a psychotherapist because I couldn't bear the idea that, after the end of an affair, all our shared memories might be expunged from the mind of the other, that they might no longer exist outside my own belief they'd happened. I couldn't accept the possibility of being the only one who would remember everything about those moments as carefully as I tried to remember them. My life, which exists mostly in the memories of the people I've known, is deteriorating at the rate of physiological decay. A color, a sensation, the way someone said a single word - soon it will all be gone. In a hundred and fifty years no one alive will ever have known me. Being forgotten like that, entering that great and ongoing blank, seems more like death than death. — Sarah Manguso

If you are not innovating, you are deteriorating. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. — T. S. Eliot

Too many of the elderly do not have the family or the communal attachments necessary to feel valued; too many are widowed or otherwise alone; too many live in surroundings where they are essentially without the companionship necessary to stimulate a mind in danger of deteriorating. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Social pain does not trigger endorphin the way physical pain does, except for a brief laugh or cry. A broken heart doesn't trigger endorphin the way a broken bone does. In the past, daily life held so much physical pain that social pain was secondary.Today, we spend less time suffering the pain of physical labor, predator attack, or deteriorating disease. Our attention is free to focus on the pain of disappointed social expectations. This leaves us feeling that life is more painful even though it's less painful than in the past. 33 — Anonymous

Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly. — Malcolm X

His hand tightened on the coppiced knob handle of his shillelagh when he also saw the deteriorating fabric. Bridget and Peter had walked together through this wooded area on the north side of Glencar Lake many times over these last four years searching for some telltale sign of Meg. — Georgette Symonds

Both of our memories were deteriorating, and in recent years the effort required to recall a name or incident felt almost wearyingly physical, like clearing out an attic. Proper nouns were particularly elusive. Adverbs and adjectives would go next, until we were left with pronouns and imperative verbs. Eat! Walk! Sleep now! — David Nicholls

I cannot explain how two souls join. No man or element or god ever could. But you are tied to each other. Because of that - because of your true, consuming, pure love - you will thrive together . . . or you will perish together.
"I don't understand." I swallowed, trying to make sense of it all.
If he hadn't heard your voice, he'd be fine. But once he aged, however many years from now that might come, you would have found yourself deteriorating then. Or if you had disobeyed Me so fully that I had to kill you, he'd have died in the same breath. You are tied through your souls. Now, what happens to one body happens to the other. And since your voice has taken hold of him, killing him slowly, you fall down with him. Slower, of course, as you are still Mine. But it will consume you eventually, all the same. — Kiera Cass

American is deteriorating because it is becoming like other countries — Dennis Prager

The price of freedom keeps going up, but the quality keeps deteriorating. — Ashleigh Brilliant

The apostle Paul had much to say about the immorality of individual church members, but little to say about the immorality of pagan Rome. He did not rail against the abuses in Rome - slavery, idolatry, gladiator games, political oppression, greed - even though such abuses surely offended Christians of that day every bit as much as our deteriorating society offends Christians today. — Philip Yancey

You cannot be a good house in a rapidly deteriorating neighborhood. The credibility and the fair functioning of the neighborhood matter a great deal. Without that, the integrity of the capitalist system will weaken further". — Bernardo Kliksberg

Already, I seemed to feel my intellect deteriorating, my heart petrifying, my soul contracting; and I
trembled lest my very moral perceptions should become deadened, my distinctions of right and wrong confounded, and all my better faculties be sunk, at last, beneath the baneful influence of such a mode of life. The gross vapors of earth were gathering around me, and closing in upon my inward heaven; and thus it was that Mr. Weston rose at length upon me, appearing like the morning star in my horizon, to save me from the fear of utter darkness; and I rejoiced that I now had a subject for contemplation that was above me, not beneath. — Anne Bronte

When your troops go to war, the prime minister or the president change overnight from an administrator, dealing with taxation and welfare and health and deteriorating roads, into the commander-in-chief. And it's just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush's fallacious and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions. — Jimmy Carter

There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That's the end. That's when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day. — Bruce Lee

It would be rash to conclude that, on balance, the environment of the globe as a whole is either deteriorating or improving, or that the survival of the societies we know depends upon filling a simple set of prescriptions. It is all too complex and dynamic, whether it involves managing greenhouse gases or Nile snails ... The future condition of the globe's interlocking natural and social systems depends more on human behavior than on the further investigation of natural processes, however desirable that may be. — Gilbert F. White

Many foreclosed homes are neglected or abandoned, as legal proceedings or other factors delay their resale. Deteriorating or vacant properties can, in turn, directly affect the quality of life in a neighborhood, for example, by leading to increases in vandalism or crime. — Ben Bernanke

There never was a strong character that was not made strong by discipline of the will; there never was a strong people that did not rank subordination and discipline among the signal virtues. Subjection to moods is the mark of a deteriorating morality. There is no baser servitude than that of the man whose caprices are his masters, and a nation composed of such men could not long preserve its liberties. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

J. Robertson McQuilkin ... was once approached by an elderly lady facing the trials of old age. Her body was in decline, her beauty being replaced by thinning hair, wrinkles and skin discoloration. She could no longer do the things she once could, and she felt herself to be a burden on others. "Robertson, why does God let us get old and weak? Why must I hurt so?" she asked.
After a few moments' thought McQuilkin replied, "I think God has planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical. But the strength and beauty of age is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so we'll be sure to concentrate on the strength and beauty which is forever. It makes us more eager to leave behind the temporary, deteriorating part of us and be truly homesick for our eternal home. If we stayed young and strong and beautiful, we might never want to leave! — Philip Yancey

Do I know my lines? As I'm getting older, they're getting harder to learn. The old brain cells are deteriorating. — Pauline Quirke

The notes on the flash drive showed a steady progression into dementia, a deteriorating mental state directly linked to incidents of exposure to Sovereign. There must have been some kind of field generated by the vessel; some kind of radiation or emission. Something that had destroyed and corrupted Qian's mind when he went to study it in person. It had affected Edan, too, though the transformation was more subtle. The batarian had begun acting differently from the moment he first visited the site of the artifact: consorting with humans, risking the wrath of the Spectres. Edan probably hadn't even been aware of the changes, though looking back it was obvious to Saren. — Drew Karpyshyn

In the end, we must restore a balance within ourselves between who we are and what we are doing. Each of us must take a greater personal responsibility for this deteriorating global environment; each of us must take a hard look at the habits of mind and action that reflect - and have led to - this grave crisis. — Al Gore

Dear Ms. Dunne,
I was hoping that you could come to the school to discuss Katie's rapidly deteriorating behavior in class. Her attention span is short and she distracts other students by her note-passing. How does Wednesday after school sound? You can reach me at the school. You know the number.
Ms. Casey

To Katie,
What do you mean your mum just laughed?
From Toby

Ahern, Cecelia (2005-02-01). Love, Rosie (p. 99). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition. — Cecelia Ahern

Loss, be it the death of a loved one, deteriorating health, lost dreams, or some kind of divine interruption . . . will usually include a measure of pain. Your positive attitude, perspective change, and faith are what will turn your wailing into praise and joyful dancing. — Cheryl Zelenka

The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the children of the world the result is rage. It is the rage I saw in the eyes of the teenage Interahamwe militiamen in Rwanda, it is the rage I sensed in the hearts of the children of Sierra Leone, it is the rage I felt in crowds of ordinary civilians in Rwanda, and it is the rage that resulted in September 11. Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperate group who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need and deserve. — Romeo Dallaire

Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man's habits change quickly enough? — Isaac Asimov

I like people. I like animals, too-whales and quail, dinosaurs and dodos. But I like human beings especially, and I am unhappy that the pool of human germ plasm, which determines the nature of the human race, is deteriorating. — Linus Pauling

Yet you still value the things you've lost the most. Because the things you've lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating. Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect. — Iain Thomas

In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn't offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It's really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, "I raised a good son or a good daughter." You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers - even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness. — Clayton M Christensen

If one civilized man were doomed to pass a dozen years amid a race of intractable savages, unless he had power to improve them, I greatly question whether, at close of that period, he would not have become, at least, a barbarian himself. And I, as I could not make my young companions better, feared exceedingly that they would make me worse- would gradually bring my feelings, habits, capacities, to the level of their own; without, however, imparting to me their light-heartedness and cheerful vivacity. Already, I seemed to feel my intellect deteriorating, my heart petrifying, my soul contracting; and I trembled lest my very moral perceptions should be come deadened, my distinctions of right and wrong confounded, and all my better faculties be sunk at last, beneath the baneful influence of such a mode of life. — Anne Bronte

Netanyahu and his coalition have no strategy of their own except endless counterinsurgency against the backdrop of a steadily deteriorating diplomatic positionThe operation in Gaza is not Netanyahu's strategy in excess; it is Netanyahu's strategy in its entirety. The liberal Zionist, two-state vision(that) once commanded a mainstream position within Israeli political life has been relegated to a left-wing rump within it. — Jonathan Chait

The whole constitution of property on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The young generation can influence their elders and can make them understand the environmental problems that are faced by us today. The youth can make them see that our environment is deteriorating day by day. — Oren Lyons

I figured my body always would be able to repair itself. I think all of us believe that - until you begin to age and get hit with deteriorating joints. — Lee Majors

There is a quasi-scientific fable that if you
can get a frog to sit quietly in a saucepan of cold water, and if you then
raise the temperature of the water very slowly and smoothly so that there
is no moment marked to be the moment at which the frog should jump,
he will never jump. He will get boiled. Is the human species changing
its own environment with slowly increasing pollution and rotting its
mind with slowly deteriorating religion and education in such a saucepan? — Gregory Bateson

We have reached a point where the value we do add to our economy is now being outweighed by the value we are removing, not only from future generations in terms of diminished resources, but from ourselves in terms of unlivable cities, deadening jobs, deteriorating health, and rising crime. In biological terms, we have become a parasite and are devouring our host. — Paul Hawken

The world's deteriorating ecology poses as great a danger to mankind today as did the nuclear standoff between the superpowers at the height of the Cold War. — Mikhail Gorbachev

Because without that source of wonder, I know that I am doomed. Without it, I will forever wander the world in a state of bottomless dissatisfaction - nothing but a howling ghost, trapped in a body made of slowly deteriorating meat. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Whether you see the world as emergent or, deteriorating. We have long known that some people favor innovation and look positively toward the future while others are frightened of change and want to halt innovation. — Michael Crichton

A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself ... so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe. — Eugene O'Neill

What is correct action in a deteriorating world? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The sky was white but deteriorating fast. As always, it was becoming an enormous drop sheet. Blood was bleeding through, and in patches, the clouds were dirty, like footprints in melting snow.
Footprints? you ask.
Well, I wonder whose those could be. — Markus Zusak

The lobby of the Nelson Hotel always smells of the river
it's in the pores of the place
but this evening the smell is heavier than usual. It's a smell that makes us think of bad ideas, blown investments, forged checks, deteriorating health, stolen office supplies, unpaid alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with cheap novelties, dead hope, dead skin, and fallen arches.
This is the kind of place you don't come to unless you've been here before and all your other options are pretty much foreclosed. It's a place where men who left their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained mattresses, coughing and smoking cigarettes. — Stephen King

What had happened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural passions becoming unnatural passions. — G.K. Chesterton

There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating. — Louis Leakey

There's no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock, or worse, to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating. — Peter Lynch

He looks at me for a long moment. "You're not the type of woman who gives up easily, are you?" I
can't tell if he admires this trait or sees it as a sign of deteriorating mental health. — Eileen Cook

Most Alzheimer's sufferers aren't diagnosed until their 70s. However, we now know that their brains began deteriorating long before that. — Michael Greger

A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall. — Vince Lombardi

When digital technology started becoming the norm, you've got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won't last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear. — Dave Grohl

In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

I would say that workers in general, and white workers particularly, are correct that their economic wellbeing is deteriorating. — Andy Stern

Coffee was the substance that kept us going. Our surgeons had offered us something stronger, but we were all concerned about our performance deteriorating when the stimulants wore off. — Gene Kranz

Hennie replies to, How are you doing? 'I'm deteriorating at a normal rate. — Sandra Dallas

The average condition of the people improving or deteriorating, depends upon whether population is advancing faster than improvement, or improvement than population. — John Stuart Mill

Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company. — John Stuart Mill

One of the reasons for this cataclysmic change of destinies was the inherent weakness of a decaying agricultural empire of the Mughals which after more than two hundred years of rule over vast areas of India, was at its terminal stage and needed a small push to crumble like a house of cards.That push was given by six East India Companies of different European countries which had extracted rights to trade with India from the Mughals but transformed themselves as the arbiters and protectors of several Indian states. In this process they not only became rich but also militarily strong because in the twilight years of the Mughal empire, deteriorating security environment necessitated to arm themselves to protect their economic interests. Because of their inherent superiority as representatives of rising industrial powers, they had access to modern techniques and technology of warfare, which turned out to be the decisive factor in capturing vast territories in India. — Shahid Hussain Raja

Facing a deteriorating economy and a weakening hold over the populace, the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein opted to revitalize tribal leaders and conservative practices as a means of stabilizing state power; those conservative practices were not an inherent feature of a predominantly Muslim country. — Nadje Al-Ali

The US is often the first to call for transparency and integrity in the reporting of other governments. It has never provided transparency or integrity in its reporting on the war in Iraq. It has downplayed the growth of the insurgency and other civil conflicts. It exaggerated progress in the development of Iraqi forces, and has reported meaningless macroecomic figures claiming 'progress' in the face of steadily deteriorating economic conditions for most Iraqis outside the Kurdish security zone, and does so in the face of almost incredible incompetence by USAID and the Corps of Engineers. — Anthony H. Cordesman

Whenever you face obstacles, crises and dilemmas and your confidence is in your associates more than in God- it is a sign your faith is deteriorating. — T.D. Jakes

It is a fact that the entire Kentucky River system, which the central part of the state complacently depends upon for its future water, is deteriorating rapidly because of strip mining, because of bad farming, because of industrial and agricultural pollutants, because of urban sewage. It is deteriorating, that is to say, because almost nobody cares, or cares to know, where water comes from, so long as it keeps coming. — Wendell Berry

According to the English scholar Richard Lloyd-Jones, some of the clay tablets deciphered from ancient Sumerian include complaints about the deteriorating writing skills of the young. — Steven Pinker

My brain is good, but my body is deteriorating. I probably have another two or three years. Or I can pass tomorrow, but it doesn't make a difference to me. — Ed Koch

I kept going deeper and deeper into this world of repetition ... The sad thing is, people don't want to believe that the person they're in love with is out of his mind, drinking and using, so if you give them even half an excuse, they're going to want to believe it. A girl with no prior exposure to the disease had to be blissfully unaware of the nefarious tricks of the dope fiend. That's how I was able to get high all summer and autumn and pretend like it wasn't happening. I was saying, 'I'm sick.' I was deteriorating physically and emotionally. Jaime was tolerant, and it did speak well of her character, because she was not the type to abandon ship during a crisis. She didn't consider backing off or bowing out, she was just there, which I can't say about everybody. I don't know if I could say it even about myself. — Anthony Kiedis

Love was not blind, but it might mimic a deteriorating case of cataracts. — Sherry Thomas

Indeed, as we begin the twenty-first century, the money and traditional economies are slowly destroying their own support system. Increasing demands of the two economies are surpassing the sustainable yields of the ecosystems that underpin them. For example, one-third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil at a rate that is undermining its long-term productivity, fully half of the world's rangeland is overgrazed and deteriorating into desert, and the world's forests have shrunk by about half since the dawn of agriculture and are continuing to shrink. — Stuart L. Hart

I plan to write more songs of my own, especially on behalf of the animals we needlessly raise for food, at their great expense, and at great expense to our precious, deteriorating planet. — Susan Schneider

I'll give you some symptoms of a sign that your faith is deteriorating-whenever you face all of your problems and you trust only your plans to get you out-it is a sign that your faith is deteriorating. — T.D. Jakes

I am interested in giving the reader true vertigo. I look to deteriorating consciousness as our inevitable condition and I am trying to make it work the same way I did with my juvenile mind - that is, to imagine how we are suffering. To record it being actual and then virtual. — Tony Burgess

Marie-Laure sits in her customary spot in the corner of the kitchen, closest to the fireplace, and listens to the friends of Melanie Manec complain ... Nine of them sit around the square table, knees pressed to knees. Ration card restrictions, abysmal puddings, the deteriorating quality of fingernail varnish - these are crimes they feel in their souls. To hear so many of them in a room together confuses and excites Marie-Laure: they are giddy when they should be serious, somber after jokes; Madame Hebrard cries over the nonavailability of Demerara sugar, another woman's complaint about tobacco disintegrates mid sentence into hysterics about the phenomenal size of the perfumer's backside. They smell of stale bread, of stuffy living rooms crammed with dark titanic Breton furnishings. — Anthony Doerr

Garner had to search for his little girl in this endless sea of irrelevancy and indifference and preoccupied people and deteriorating places. This is crazy, this is hopeless ... — John Shirley

There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before our eyes. I feel a deep sorrow that my kids will never get to see what I've seen, and their kids will see nothing; there's a deep sadness whenever I look at nature now. — Peter Matthiessen

Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency ... and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating. — Alan Greenspan

The quality of American patents has been deteriorating for years; they are increasingly issued for products and processes that are not truly innovative - things like the queuing system for Netflix, which was patented in 2003. Yes, it makes renting movies a snap, but was it really a breakthrough deserving patent protection? — Robert Pozen

Then she'll die. Look at her, Olivia - she's been steadily deteriorating for days. This is the best she's looked since I saw her at your joining ceremony, but Lock can't spend the rest of his life holding her hand." "I can try." Lock had been staring down at Kat but now he looked up at Olivia, his heart in his eyes. "I'll do whatever I can to heal the lady Kat," he said softly. "I care for her and so does Deep - he just doesn't know how to express it." "I'd say he expresses his emotions just fine," Liv said sourly. "But — Evangeline Anderson

Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, — T. S. Eliot

Many people supported the Conservatives because of David Cameron, while many people supported Labour despite Ed Miliband. Deteriorating opinions of Cameron will therefore have a bigger impact on the Conservatives' vote share than worsening views of Miliband would have on Labour's. — Michael Ashcroft

Protestant Christianity, whether in its liberal or conservative garb, finds itself waking up each morning in bed with a deteriorating modern culture, between sheets with a raunchy sexual reductionism, despairing scientism, morally normless cultural relativism, and self-assertive individualism. We remain resident aliens, OF the world but not profoundly in it, dining at the banquet table of waning modernity without a whisper of table grace. We all wear biblical name tags (Joseph, David, and Sarah), but have forgotten what our Christian names mean. — Thomas C. Oden

The living world has become impoverished. Species are being lost every day. Energy and other resources are nearing exhaustion. The environment is deteriorating. Pollution is everywhere. Climate is changing. Natural balances are threatened. — Christian De Duve

But now with the living conditions deteriorating, and with the sure knowledge that we are slated for destruction, we have been transformed into an implacable army of liberation. — George Jackson

The infrastructure, institutions and social fabric of Venezuela are deteriorating, and people realize the Chavez government has been the problem, not the solution. — Leopoldo Lopez

A customer facing crucial decisions:
What should I wipe myself with? What should I brush with? His personal hygiene was deteriorating rapidly as he stared at the rows of possibilities, sweating profusely. Would he ever bathe again? — Benson Bruno

It is easy to get upset about the deteriorating state of one's body, but there are other ways to excel and impress than via one's legs. — Alain De Botton