civilization downfall Quotes

My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military- industrial civilization will soon collapse.

The downfall of every civilization comes, not from the moral corruption of the common man, but rather from the moral complacency of common men in high places.

Could the world fall?

I think human arrogance will be the demise of civilization.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

Nations have passed away and left no traces, And history gives the naked cause of it - One single simple reason in all cases; They fell because their peoples were not fit.

I don't build a house without predicting the end of the present social order.

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 fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.

Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

Because Roman civilization perished through barbarian invasions, we are perhaps too much inclined to think that that is the only way a civilization can die. If the lights that guide us ever go out, they will fade little by little, as if of their own accord.... We therefore should not console ourselves by thinking that the barbarians are still a long way off. Some peoples may let the torch be snatched from their hands, but others stamp it out themselves.

It is a fact worthy of note that the shortest lived nations of which we have record have been monogamic. Rome...was a monogamic nation and the numerous evils attending that system early laid the foundation for that ruin which eventually overtook her.

This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed.

I believe that all technological societies tend to self-destruct. The reason is that the very things that make us a successful technological society, such as our curiosity, our ambition and determination, will also cause us to fall.

While denial leads to certainty, it is only the certainty of death. This is true for individuals and also for civilizations.