As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. — Gore Vidal
Type production has gone mad, with its senseless outpouring of new types... only in degenerate times can personality (opposed to the nameless masses) become the aim of human development. — Jan Tschichold
Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence. — Aristotle
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. — John Stuart Mill
A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit. — Ivan Chtcheglov
One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic. — Robert Musil
Decency and tolerance, to be of any value, must be capable of withstanding the severest strain. — Mahatma Gandhi
Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground, one foot nailed to the floor. — Henry Rollins
Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity. — Herbert Spencer
toleration of exploitation, oppression, and injustice points to a condition lying like a pall over the whole of society; it is apathy, an unconcern that is incapable of suffering. — Dorothee Solle
Short Degeneracy Quotes
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. — Abraham Lincoln
Mental degeneracy may be caused by lead poisoning. Or by a poor dip in the gene pool. — Edward Abbey
The defenders of decent society and the disciples of degeneracy are often the same people. — Caleb Carr
the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon — Elizabeth Bowen
Degeneration Quotes
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms. — Aristotle
The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races. — Harry J. Anslinger
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. — Peter Drucker
I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news — John Muir
Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills. — David Mamet
It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached. — Imre Lakatos
All knowledge degenerates into probability. — David Hume
I would expect, going to Hell, being surrounded by people that look and act like this guy - Sir Jimmy Savile. Obviously psychopathic eyes. If you saw this guy at the playground you would call the police. Just flaming scumbag. Just over the top, out of control, degenerate demon. — Alex Jones
Social media has degenerated into a deafening cacophony of groups signaling and repeating their shared myths. — Naval Ravikant
Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy. — Thomas Jefferson
Man is man because he is free to operate within a framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy. — Martin Luther
Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom. — Charles Horton Cooley
Those who wallow around in the sickness of their immorality and degeneracy get very little joy out of life here and certainly not much promise is held out for them hereafter. — Sterling W Sill
It will be remembered, that a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is solemnly enjoined by most of the state constitutions, and particularly by our own, as a necessary safeguard against the danger of degeneracy, to which republics are liable, as well as other governments, though in a less degree than others. — James Madison
The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin. — George William Curtis
In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. — Thomas Jefferson
If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy. — Boethius
The pediatrician must have thought me one of those neurotic mothers who craved distinction for her child but who in our civilization's latter-day degeneracy could only conceive of the exceptional in terms of deficiency or affliction. — Lionel Shriver
Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels. — Albert Einstein
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. — Thomas B. Macaulay
If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy. — Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus)
Present-day society is saturated in the degeneracy of subjugation, which prevents women from fully participating in society as social equals. — Bryant H. McGill
The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. — Thomas Jefferson
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. — Thomas Babington Macaulay
Love is basic for the birth of a true society, while violence has in it the essence of anti-sociality. Love is positive, is eternal: violence is degeneracy, it is it's own destruction. — Toyohiko Kagawa
Kindliness seems to exist primarily as an animal instinct, so deeply rooted that mental degeneracy, which works from the top down,does not destroy it until the mind sinks to the lower grades of idiocy. — Charles Horton Cooley
It [appears] 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 [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. — Thomas Jefferson
The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered from the pulpit of St. Sophia against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding or even marking the character of any individual. — Edward Gibbon
The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion. — Jonathan Swift
When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup. — Thomas Sowell
The hippies had in mind something that they wanted, and were calling it freedom, but in the final analysis freedom is a purely negative goal. It just says something is bad. Hippies weren't really offering any alternatives other than colorful short-term ones, and some of these were looking more and more like pure degeneracy. Degeneracy can be fun but it's hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation. — Robert M. Pirsig
But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind. — Joseph Addison
"It astonishes me to find... [that so many] of our countrymen... should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty... which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries." — Thomas Jefferson
It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy. — Aleister Crowley
The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy . . . Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. — Thomas Jefferson
If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creatures could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? — Cormac McCarthy
In Conclusion
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