National Decay Quotes

It is possible for great nations to rot from within.

If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.

The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom.

Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.

Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself.

Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.

The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.

The thought of my children growing up in an America with less freedom, less opportunity, and a lower standard of living is a long-term pain I cannot and will not bear.

Where is the hope? I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us. Where is the hope? The hope that each of us have is not in who governs us, or what laws are passed, or what great things that we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people, and that’s where our hope is in this country; that’s where our hope is in life.

Waste of resources must ultimately result in National decay. This subject therefore ought to be dealt with in a sympathetic, inquiring spirit, being entirely non-political and non-sectarian.

When the family dies, the nation follows.

Those who are acquainted with the history of the world are not ignorant that polygamy has always been the general rule and monogamy the exception. Since the founding of the Roman empire monogamy has prevailed more extensively than in times previous to that. The founders of that ancient empire were robbers and women stealers, and made laws favoring monogamy in consequence of the scarcity of women among them, and hence this monogamic system which now prevails throughout all Christendom, and which has been so fruitful a source of prostitution and whoredom throughout all the Christian monogamic cities of the Old and New World, until rottenness and decay are at the root of their institutions both national and religious. Polygamy did not have its origin with Joseph Smith, but it existed from the beginning. So far as I am concerned as an individual, I did not ask for it; I never desired it; and if I ever had a trial of my faith in the world, it was when Joseph Smith revealed that doctrine to me; and I had to pray incessantly and exercise faith before the Lord until He revealed to me the truth, and I was satisfied.

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.

I pray we are still a young and courageous nation, that we have not grown so old and so fat and so prosperous that all we can think about is to sit back with our arms around our money bags. If we choose to do that I have no doubt that the smoldering fires will burst into flame and consume us - dollars and all.

The America that we knew as the smartest place on the planet is gone with the wind.

Freedom of speech means nothing to a people who are too weak in their convictions to speak out against the evil that is eating at the heart of the nation like a cancer.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking. Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another ruler with trumpetings again. Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

As I look around, I get this sinking feeling that we're off track, that there's something sick in the soul of our country. I examine the fruit that's hanging on the tree of America, and I can see that it's rotting. And that concerns me deeply.

Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.

A nation that cannot preserve itself ought to die, and it will die - die in the grasp of the evils it is too feeble to overthrow

I don't believe our country will last the way we know it much longer unless there's a change. And we just continue this moral decline going down, and the only hope, I believe, is God. We just hope and pray that maybe he'll hear our prayers and give us some godly leadership.

All you got to do is look around. This country's getting worse and worse and more and more immoral, and we're rotting from within.

When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form

Here in the city the worst thing that can happen to a nation has happened: we are a people afraid of its youth.