{"quotes":[{"text":"Nature's laws must be obeyed, and the period of decline begins, and goes on with accelerated rapidity.","author":"Warren De la Rue","tags":["laws","must","decline "],"id":12819,"author_id":"Warren+De+la+Rue"},{"text":"God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives ‘declining’.","author":"Craig D. Lounsbrough","tags":["choices","christian","christianity","decisions","decline","defeat","fool","foolhardy","god","ignorance","ignore","invitation","invite","life","lives","stupid","stupidity","wisdom","wise"],"id":22716,"author_id":"Craig+D.+Lounsbrough"},{"text":"When you are the central character in a seemingly boiling pit of “busy-ness” the time will come when the pace of decline cannot be countered. You build yourself the circumstances of ultimate failure by failing to grow, by failing to act on your learnings.","author":"Tony Curl","tags":["courage","decline","failure","failure-to-learn","growth","importance","learning","priorities","time-management","urgency"],"id":26962,"author_id":"Tony+Curl"},{"text":"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.","author":"Thomas Jefferson","tags":["apathy","complacency","corruption","decline","misgovernment","political-philosophy"],"id":29059,"author_id":"Thomas+Jefferson"},{"text":"I have the not altogether unsatisfying impression that civilisation is collapsing around me.Is it my age, I wonder, or the age we live in? I am not sure. Civilisations do collapse, after all, but on the other hand people grow old with rather greater frequency.","author":"Theodore Dalrymple","tags":["age","civilization","decline"],"id":72213,"author_id":"Theodore+Dalrymple"},{"text":"Our politicians, by their words and policies, either expand or contract the frontiers of freedom. We the people either monitor and encourage its progress, or witness and suffer its decline. (Scott L. Vanatter).","author":"Scott L. Vanatter","tags":["decline","freedom","progress"],"id":82092,"author_id":"Scott+L.+Vanatter"},{"text":"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.","author":"Gustave Le Bon","tags":["civilization","crowds","decline","indifference","the-masses"],"id":123281,"author_id":"Gustave+Le+Bon"},{"text":"And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best of not earning their daily bread the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans even after so many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion.","author":"Gary Shteyngart","tags":["america","americans","decline","defeat","docility","exhaustion","guilt","united-states"],"id":149372,"author_id":"Gary+Shteyngart"},{"text":"He completely lacked any ardent interest that might have occupied his mind. His interior life was impoverished, had undergone a deterioration so severe that it was like the almost constant burden of some vague grief. And bound up with it all was an implacable sense of personal duty and the grim determination to present himself at his best, to conceal his frailties by any means possible, and to keep up appearances. It had all contributed to making his existence what it was: artificial, self-conscious, and forced—until every word, every gesture, the slightest deed in the presence of others had become a taxing and grueling part in a play.","author":"Thomas Mann","tags":["acting","actor","appearances","artifice","artificial","decline","family","hollowness","self-conscious"],"id":158122,"author_id":"Thomas+Mann"},{"text":"Diminishing returns is the outcome of restriction.","author":"Sunday Adelaja","tags":["blessing","decline","diminishing-returns","employment","finance","job","jobless","life","money","purpose","restriction","work"],"id":187213,"author_id":"Sunday+Adelaja"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":27,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}