Civilization Collapse Quotes

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

The Mohammadan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

Nuclear weapons are only good for deterring. It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite ends of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.

Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

The civilization you sit in ... is now obvious in crisis, perhaps death pangs, twisting grotesquely like a dying animal, swirling down the garbage drain-this civilization was founded on God's road map.

This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.

The atomic clock ticks faster and faster. We may anticipate a state of affairs in which the Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to the civilization and life of the other, though not without risking its own. We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other but only at risk of his own life.

Sedentary culture is the goal of civilization. It means the end of its lifespan and brings about its corruption.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it's game over. It's control-alt-delete for civilization.

Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.

From the days of Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx... this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society... has been steadily growing.

The reward for using the atom's power towards man's welfare is great and sure. The punishment for its misuse would seem to be death and the destruction of the civilization that has been growing for a thousand years.

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls--the World.

That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended ... civilizations are built up ... excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin.

In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It's their nature. They can't help it.

Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past.

Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out. It overtook the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence. It weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of annihilation and dissolution. Civilization decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed

Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.

China's use of 'night soil,' as the Chinese rightly call a manure that is collected after dark, is probably the reason that its soils are still healthy after four millennia of intensive agriculture, while other great civilizations - the Maya, for one - floundered when their soils turned to dust.

Civilization is coming to an end, you understand.

Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.