“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” —Toynbee
“The five marks of the Roman decaying culture:
- Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth;
- Obsession with sex and perversions of sex;
- Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original;
- Widening disparity between very rich and very poor;
- Increased demand to live off the state.”
–Edward Gibbon
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.”
–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn