#decline

The 200 years when Britain and the US were the top two economies were an aberration and that will change. The decline of empires has happened much faster than folks think. I believe that gold will be a far better bet in 20 years than the dollar. ↗

— Tom Winnifrith

#believe #bet #better #britain #change

Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes, that was better in any case, life declined. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#age

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. ↗

— Theodore Dalrymple

#civilization #decline #age

My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language. ↗

— James Thurber

#decline #english #english language #expression #fact

Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#complacency #corruption #decline #misgovernment #political-philosophy

Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country. ↗

— Oswald Spengler

#men

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. ↗

— Gustave Le Bon

#crowds #decline #indifference #the-masses #respect

The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. ↗

— Oswald Spengler

#journalist

What I'm primarily saying,' he says, 'is that this is a time for knowledge assimilation, not backstabbing. We learned a lesson, you and I. We personally grew. Gratitude for this growth is an appropriate response. Gratitude, and being careful never to make the same mistake twice. ↗

— George Saunders

#narcissism #personal-growth #personal-growth

Since the decline of record companies and music sales, I've always played live. ↗

— Adam Ant

#companies #decline #i #live #music