“In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.”— Eric Ambler
“When the leading warriors of a nation find it advisable to mutilate their own records, it is a clear sign that the end of that nation's glory is not far distant.”— Ernest Bramah
“No nation can be destroyed from without which does not first destroy itself from within.”— Arthur Capper
“A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.”— Aimé Césaire
“In these days of rebuke and blasphemy, the salt of the earth, if it hath not quite lost its savour, is become lamentably weak and vapid.”— Samuel Horsley
“I can't help feeling that there is a connection between the decay of our language and the decay of our social life.”— J. B. Priestley
“The degeneration of a country is not due to the foolishness of its people, but to the selfishness of its intellectuals.”— Hu Shih
“The entire history of the world is a history of great powers rising and falling, and we are not exempt.”— Robert Kagan
“The decay of the creative forces in the bourgeoisie was due... to the fact that the state was becoming more and more the master of the economic and social life.”— Michael Rostovtzeff
“The way you can tell if a society is sick is if it is unable to tell the truth about itself.”— Jaron Lanier
“So, the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers.”— Malcolm Muggeridge