Moral Decline Quotes

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

The United States has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day.

After the vision of the anointed was given increasing scope in the education and public policy of the United States and other Western societies during the decades beginning with the 1960s, the social degeneration became palpable, documented beyond issue, and immense across a wide spectrum of social phenomena—declining educational standards, rising crime rates, broken homes, soaring rates of teenage pregnancy, growing drug usage, and unprecedented levels of suicide among adolescents. This social devastation was not due to poverty, for the material standard of living was rising substantially during this time. It was not due to repression, for an unprecedented variety of new “rights” emerged from the courts and legislatures to liberate people from the constraints of the law while they were being liberated from social constraints by the spread of “nonjudgmental” attitudes. Neither was this social degeneration due to the disruptions of war or natural catastrophes, for it was an unusually long period of peace, and science conquered many diseases that had plagued the human race for centuries, as well as providing better ways of protecting people from earthquakes and other destructive acts of nature. It was instead an era of self-inflicted wounds.

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" You are.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

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.

We are in a crisis of political comportment. We are witnessing the rise of the classless. Our politicians are becoming degenerate. This has been happening for a while but gets worse as the country coarsens. We are defining deviancy ever downward.

I contend that the reason why America is not as happy as it was in 1950 or 1920 or whenever, 100 years ago, is because our priorities are wrong, but it has nothing to do with exploiting the planet and has everything to do with losing faith in God.

We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind.

Perhaps there was a correlation between taking prayer and Bible study out of schools, and what has happened in our society.

Liquor perverts the end of society, and unfits us for all those distinguishing and exquisite Feelings, which are the Cordials of Life, and the noblest Privileges of Humanity.

Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors.

The intellectual and moral character of the European is deteriorated by the mixture of black or red blood.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.

The traditional spokespersons for the Evangelicals, such as Chuck Colson and James Dobson, have become alarmed about this drift away from the 'Family Values' issues that they believe should be the overwhelming concerns of Evangelicals. They have expressed their displeasure in letters of protest circulated through the religious media.

The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.

The fall of man stands a lie before Beethoven, a truth before Hitler.

… everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.

But the Bible speaks against it, and because the Bible speaks against it, we allow rampant sin including homosexuality and lying, and to me lying is just as b ad as homosexuality, and we've allowed this sin to run rampant in our nation.

Although, from the point of view of sociology, the overt ambition of 'American Pastoral' - to imagine the impact on a good man of America's fall from the family decencies of the '30s and '40s to the self-centred violence of the '60s - outstrips anything Sabbath's Theater attempts, the writing is no less fervid an excurse into the writer's mind.

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

Maybe there was a time that you could count on the American home as being the moral fabric center and that they would teach you right, but with the liberty of just divorcing without a thought, it's horrible.