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Decline Quotes

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Decline Quotes

“A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their growing indifference and lack of respect for all general beliefs.”

CivilizationCrowdsIndifferenceDeclineThe Masses
Book:The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
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“You see? Silbermann assures us that this technique has added years to the sexual life of his patients. But, of course, one must be a born fighter to profit by it. In this respect we are rather backward in France; a certain lack of persistence and determination causes us to lose out in the race of pleasure. It’s different in the United States. There are people band together, organize group therapy sessions, make pornographic films, found institutes and clinics, all dedicated to combating the Decline of erection. America is the largest true phallocracy. By comparison, we French are a sorry lot of quitters.”

SexPleasureAgingDeclineNever Give UpAmerican CultureImpotence
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“We drove down the highway, past shabby farmsteads with flaking paintwork and rotting wood, past tumbling-down tobacco barns cut through with shards of sunlight. Past abandoned cars and rusting farm machinery, and black cattle standing in paddocks next to farmhouses. Past towns that seemed half-abandoned, with boarded-up shops and houses with Confederate flags in their windows and 'VOTE TRUMP' signs on the front lawn. Shutters were closed and leaves gathered on the porch; churches with billboards promised redemption for drug addicts. Flakes of snow fell but didn't settle. Our friend drove us around the country in his white pick-up truch with his sheepdog in the back and hisred toolbox and wrenches in the footwell. He told us about his people, past and present, and introduced us to farmers who were holding on. They all told us the same thing: America had chosen industrial farming and abandoned its small family farms, and this was the result - a landscape and a community that was falling apart. They showed us fields of oilseed rape that were full of weeds because they were now resistant to the herbicides that had been overused. They spoke of mountains ripped open for minerals, and rivers polluted, the farming people leaving the land or holding on in hidden poverty. And the worse it got, the more people seemed to gravitate to charlatans with their grand promises and ready-made scapegoats to focus all their anger on.”

PovertyDeclineKentuckyConfederate FlagFamily FarmsIndustrial FarmingFarmsteadsCommunity Collapse
Book:Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey
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“A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley. The building encloses the figure of the god, and in this concealment lets it stand out into the holy precinct through the open portico. By means of the temple, the god is present in the temple. This presence of the god is in itself the extension and delimitation of the precinct as a holy precinct. The temple and its precinct, however, do not fade away into the indefinite. It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being.”

ArtTruthDeathDestinyBirthVictoryEnduranceDeclineDisgraceConcealment
Book:Basic Writings
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“Paul: That depresses you? Danny: Why wouldn’t it? I mean, if this kid is trying, but failing completely…. I mean, art is hard and he doesn’t have it, and doesn’t even seem to be trying. Paul: I try. Danny: I know, but there are no guarantees that you nor Zin will become great. I mean, you both are technically solid, at times, but you both need to wean off of my poetry. You need to differentiate into Paul and Zin. I mean, but even that is no guarantee. I mean. Look at all the people on Omniversica’s e-list. I mean, I’ve talked about it, and how real life intrudes and kills off artistic impulse. You told me Ben might not have continued writing had he not met you. Who knows what Jess would have done without me? Who knows if you’ll be writing in a decade? I mean, suppose you can only be good and competent. Would that satisfy? I mean, on the e-list there are people who can be great in one poem and then for another 200 poems write shit. There’s someone who wrote a great book length poem and now writes nothing. Another guy has great talent, took classes to get degrees in religion and now does little in art, because he runs an online marketing thing. Then there are those with talent who just stop and study shit. I told you about my pal who gave up art to become a sex researcher. Then there’s that girl who spent over seventy thousand bucks at an online university where a bad writer ‘teaches’ how to be a bad writer. I told you of that video Jess showed of a bad writer girl teaching others to be generic hacks. Others fuck up their lives via pregnancy. Others just grow up and forget art. You saw the work of the one guy who spent three years on a terrible book. Then he told me he was gonna craft Youtube videos. Now, he says he’s into trading cryptocurrency. And when we met he was a poet. Now he’s into Bitcoin. It’s so depressing. I think of the old folks from the Uptown Poetry Group- some are dead, others probably homeless or in mental institutions, and I told you about that guy who harassed all the women at the UPG? And he’s probably still thriving in business. And then my ex, Stacy Stafford, who’s now a New Age Christian scam artist. Jess rails about people who come to us only for help and do nothing to help us. I mean, think of a great poet like James Emanuel, and how I tried to help him, and now his stuff is almost forgotten, and the rights to his work are held by a little shit press that doesn’t even put out his work! And what about my old friend George Dickerson, the actor and poet? I did a few interviews about his excellent screenplay on his time as a diplomat in Lebanon and no one cares- even his son, a famed filmmaker in Finland- even that son refuses to do his father’s script. I mean, he has the name, the means, and the clout to get it made, and STILL George’s art is left to wither. And these people I contact for interviews? Most of them don’t even read a simple email! They ask if a Danny Wagner Video Interview is just audio or not? I mean, READ! People are so lazy, these days, it’s unreal. One cannot even read a lousy email! I mean- Paul: Yeah, it’s a shame. Danny: I’m not a magician. I can only guarantee that Jess and I will be great writers because only we are NOW and currently great. Others? Who knows? Some forget literature to do pop genres like sci fi or romance- maybe switch things up by writing about goblins. Others just quit altogether. I can’t make you nor Ben great. YOU have to do that, and I recall reading that excerpt you sent Jess of his book, where he wants money and to be a great artist, too, but by doing so parttime. That is not a good long term sign, but it is what it is. I can’t change people. I can’t change you. I can’t change Ben. I can’t change this Landon kid. I can’t even change Jess! I’m mortal.”

WritingArtTalentDeclineWriting Trajectory
Author:Dan Schneider
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“As it is with humanity’s ascent, so it is with its decline. Declining peoples first lose their sense of moderation. They strive for isolated particulars, they fling themselves shortsightedly on narrow and trifling things, they raise the conditional above the universal; then they pursue pleasure and sensuality, they seek to gratify their hatred and envy of their neighbor, their art depicts what is one-sided what is valid from one perspective only”

HumanityDeclineModeration
Author:Adalbert Stifter
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“I know from life and from history something you have not thought of: often the outward, visible, material signs and symbols of happiness and success only show themselves when the process of decline has already set in. The outer manifestations take time - like the light of that start up there which may in reality already be quenched when it looks to us to be shining at its brightest.”

HappinessBeautyDecline
Book:Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
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“Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile. 'I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might,' he hesitated, 'yes, as we might.' Eastman looked at him sourly. 'Cavenaugh, when you've practiced law in New York for twelve years, you find that people can't go far in any direction, except-' He thrust his forefinger sharply at the floor.'Even in that direction, few people can do anything out of the ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we become personally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man's integrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only be incessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we call character, is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings and glue. ("Consequences")”

CharacterIntegrityCorruptionSecretsDeclineDecadence
Book:American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps
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“Downward social mobility. We hear a lot about the great social mobility in America with the focus usually on the comparative ease of moving upwards. What's less discussed is how easy it is to go down. I think that's the direction that we're all heading in. And I think that the downward fall is gonna be very fast. Not just for us as individuals, but the whole preppy class. Just look around. Take those of our fathers who grew up very well off. Maybe their careers started out well enough but just as their contemporaries really began to accomplish things, they started to quit, or rising above office politics, or refusing to compete and risk open failure. Or not doing the humdrum part of the job. Or only doing the humdrum part. Or gradually spending more and more time on something more interesting — conservation, or the arts — where even if they were total failures no one would know it.”

ClassAmbitionDeclineSocial ClassSocial MobilitySocial ClassesCareerismDownward MobilityDownwardly Mobile
Book:Metropolitan: A Novella and Three Stories
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“You get used to it. And that surprises me. You get used to diminishment, to a body that is stalled, an impediment? Well, yes, you do. An alter ego is amazed, aghast perhaps--myself in the roaring forties, when robust health was an assumption, a given, something you barely noticed because it was always there. Acceptance has set in, somehow, has crept up on you, which is just as well, because the alternative--perpetual rage and resentment--would not help matters. You are now this other person, your earlier selves are out there, familiar, well remembered, but you have to come to terms with a different incarnation.”

ChangeAcceptanceAgingOld AgeDisabilityDecline
Book:Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time
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“You are far too well informed a man to pretend that you don’t know what little game you are playing. If you have presentiments of death, it is because of certain wishes. You desire to escape sexual impotence - impotence, in short - and you wish for death to save you from all that. It is one of the virility’s favorite ploys.”

AgingDeclineImpotenceDeath WishMen T Health
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“My body had become that of an old liar, and my most spontaneous transports had begun to end in calculated maneuverings and delayed deliveries. It was no longer a question of self-esteem or pride; when I thought of breaking up with her, it was not to avoid some sort of discomfiture: it was a question of authenticity. I loved Laura too much to drag myself along on crutches in the wake of our love.”

LoveMen And WomenAgingDeclineImpotenceLovemakingSexual IntercourseMen S HealthOlder Man Younger Girl
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“My hints had, undoubtedly and unintentionally, made her feel insecure, guilty, inadequate, afraid that she was losing whatever it was that turned me on; in short, it aroused all the self-doubt so readily awakened in women after thousands of years of servitude. Hence my zeal in denying the effects of time was abetted by Laura's complicity.”

DeclineImpotenceSelf DoubtWomen And MenSexual IntercourseMen S HealthOlder Man Younger Girl
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“Not that I had any intention of accosting him to propose any practical agreement. That would have demanded on Laura's part a degree of devotion, of understanding, a detached view of the purely animal act of love, such as could not be expected of so young a woman who was so subject conventions of comportment in a society that had always shown itself incapable of differentiating between love and sexuality.”

LoveSexualityOppressionDeclineImpotenceWomen And MenOlder Man Younger Girl
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“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.”

ForeverDeclineUnrealThingsMaterialCrumble
Book:Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge: A Dog's Afterlife Story of Loss, Love and Renewal
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“Завжди існуватимуть жадібні люди. Зрештою вони завжди там, де є (чи мали би бути) гроші. Але жадібні люди шахраюватимуть чи дозволятимуть собі недбало ставитися, лише якщо відчуватимуть, що навряд чи їхній злочин помітять, чи суворо покарають за нього.”

EconomyDeclineCivil SocietyDegenerationCourts
Book:The Great Degeneration
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“We have seen, then, that certain socioeconomic changes, notably the decline of the middle class and the rising power of monopolistic capital, had a deep psychological effect... Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position. It mobilized its emotional energies to become an important force in the struggle for the economic and political aims of Germain imperialism.”

Middle ClassDeclineNaziImperialism
Book:Escape from Freedom
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“...it is plain that the proportion of celibates was high in the Roman empire and that the fall in the fertility of marriages was going on. It is the childless marriage, the small family system that contemporary writers deplore....'The human harvest was bad,' It was bad in all classes, but the decline was most marked in the upper ranks, the most educated, the most civilized, the potential leaders of the race.”

PoliticsRaceHistoryDeclineCivilisationEugenicsFertilityChildlessnessNatalismBirthrates
Book:Medieval People
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“It was a roiling and mobile civilization marked by a steady increase in carnality, vulgarity, brutality. Yet, oddly, the institutions and the accustomed frameworks of liberal parliamentary democracy, of that highest creation of the now passing Modern Age, continued to exist--at a time when civilization itself (a term first appearing in English in 1601) was coming apart. History is not governed by logic: but we must at least consider that this strange duality cannot exist much longer: that sooner or later the very political structure of democracy may undergo a deep-going and at least for a while irreversible transformation, including mutations that may have already begun.”

AmericaDemocracyDeclineDecadencePopulismModern HistoryModern CultureDecline Of Civilization
Book:Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred
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“It suggests to us that behavior of complex animals can change very rapidly, and not always for the better. It suggests that behavior can cease to be responsive to the environment, and lead to decline and death. It suggests that animals may stop adapting. Is this what happened to the dinosaurs? Is this the true cause of their disappearance? We may never know. But it is no accident that human beings are so interested in dinosaur extinction. The decline of the dinosaurs allowed mammals—including us—to flourish. And that leads us to wonder whether the disappearance of the dinosaurs is going to be repeated, sooner or later, by us as well. Whether at the deepest level the fault lies not in blind fate—in some fiery meteor from the skies—but in our own behavior. At the moment, we have no answer.”

DeclineBehaviourExtinctionDinosaursJurassic ParkThe Lost WorldIan Malcolm
Book:The Lost World
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“For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You—you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.”

ScienceDeclineMachineryObscurityModernism
Book:Herzog
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“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.”

CorruptionApathyDeclinePolitical PhilosophyComplacencyMisgovernment
Book:Thomas Jefferson: Writings
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