Moral Decline Quotes & Sayings

These days - with the decline of the traditional churches - I'm concerned about where we obtain some form of moral direction. — John Scott

History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster. — Douglas MacArthur

Already he knew something of the history of the intervening years. He had heard now of the moral decay that had followed the collapse of supernatural religion in the minds of ignoble man, the decline of public honour, the ascendency of wealth. For men who had lost their belief in God had still kept their faith in property, and wealth ruled a venial world. — H.G.Wells

The forgotten of this country have a consistent history of turning on their champions, and I suppose the way working men and women have forsaken the very politicians who could help them most speaks of the primacy of emotion in politics. Perhaps the great decline of FDR's party, which was beginning in Henry Bonwiller's time, didn't come about because Democrats favored a logical argument over a moral one, but simply because they clung to the idea that either one mattered at all. — Ethan Canin

The institutionalization of the Beat ethic has been a moral, aesthetic, and intellectual disaster of the first order. (It has also been a disaster for fashion and manners, but that is a separate subject.) We owe to the 1960s the ultimate institutionalization of immoralist radicalism: the institutionalization of drugs, pseudo-spirituality, promiscuous sex, virulent anti-Americanism, naive anti-capitalism, and the precipitous decline of artistic and intellectual standards. But the1960s and 1970s only codified and extended into the middle class the radical spirit of the Beats, who, in more normal times, would have remained what they were in the beginning; members of a fringe movement that provided stand-up comics with material. — Roger Kimball

Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible. — Janice Rogers Brown

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

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

...the Supreme Court made several liberal decisions in the 1970s, indicating the moral decline of the nation as a whole. — Kurt Grussendorf

One reason for the decline in moral values is that the world has invented a new, constantly changing and undependable standard of moral conduct referred to as "situational ethics." Now, individuals define good and evil as being adjustable according to each situation; this is in direct contrast to the proclaimed God-given absolute standard: "Thou shalt not!"-as in "Thou shalt not steal". — David B. Haight

Society will always do better where citizens have a belief in justice, honour and private morality. Where individuals are reduced to the satisfaction of personal appetites society will decline. The need to preserve society is at the very heart of conservatism and the absolute moral truths that are required for this preservation are not subject to change. — Cory Bernardi

The believer caught between the flesh and Spirit is also caught between death and life. That is what happens when God intervenes in a human life. That intervention does not necessarily bring tranquility. In fact, it is more likely to bring tension and conflict. It is the life surrendered to the flesh which lacks inner conflict, for the decline through sin to death can be so easy. It is when the Spirit enters a life to contest the sway of sin and counter the weakness of the flesh that conflict ensues. The presence of moral conflict is a sign of the Spirit presence, not the Spirit's absence. — James D.G. Dunn

As people ages, 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. And so every generation believes that the kids today are degrading the language and taking civilization down with it — Steven Pinker

Then, as they began to decline, they all experienced some peculiar similarities: an inordinate emphasis on sports and entertainment, a fixation with lifestyles of the rich and famous, political corruption, and the loss of a moral compass. — Ben Carson

Why have we had such a decline in moral climate? I submit to you that a major factor has been a change in the philosophy which has been dominant, a change from belief in individual responsibility to belief in social responsibility. If you adopt the view that a man is not responsible for his own behavior, that somehow society is responsible, why should he seek to make his behavior good? — Milton Friedman

I don't believe our country will last the way we know it much longer unless there's a change. And we just continue this moral decline going down, and the only hope, I believe, is God. We just hope and pray that maybe he'll hear our prayers and give us some godly leadership. — Franklin Graham

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

There was a time not so long ago when you couldn't get into Malawi unless you could slide a Coke bottle between your leg and your jeans. You had to stick the bottle in at the waistband and under the watchful gaze of the Malawi police, move it between the denim and your pelvis and down your inside leg until it popped out through the leghole near your foot. The government claimed that it was to protect the country from the moral decline caused by tight jeans. — Peter Moore

There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned. — John Irving

Decadence is a moral and spiritual disease, resulting from too long a period of wealth and power, producing cynicism, decline of religion, pessimism and frivolity. The citizens of such a nation will no longer make an effort to save themselves, because they are not convinced that anything in life is worth saving. — John Bagot Glubb

And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best of not earning their daily bread the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans even after so many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion. — Gary Shteyngart

The always popular notion that the United States is in "moral decline" (a phrase favored in the pulpits and the press of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) rests on the assumption that Americans used to be far more religious and should strive to return to their former fidelity. — Peter Manseau

We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear. — Che Guevara

Deep caring about each other's fate does seem to be on the decline, but I do not believe that New Age narcissism is much to blame. The external causes of our moral indifference are a fragmented mass society that leaves us isolated and afraid, an economic system that puts the rights of capital before the rights of people, and a political process that makes citizens into ciphers.

These are the forces that allow, even encourage, unbridled competition, social irresponsibility, and the survival of the financially fittest. The executives who brought down the major corporations by taking indecent sums off the top while wage earners of modest means lost their retirement accounts were clearly more influenced by capitalist amorality than by some New Age guru. — Parker J. Palmer