Quotes Tagged "decline"

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.

The gentle downward slope gets steeper and imperceptibly becomes an abyss.

Poetry is what he turns to these days, finding in its fragmentation the proper echo of the disintegrating world.

There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.

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.

Automation is driving the decline of banal and repetitive tasks.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.

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

My proficiency with ballet was on a steep decline the more I skated.

I decline all noisy, wordy, confused, and personal controversies.