State Decline Quotes

States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.

Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction.

From that date the abandonment of the older State proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew the domestic slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling.

Luxury and excessive refinement are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal.

I've travelled to many states and seen the suffering in people's eyes I've visited communities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana and Ohio whose manufacturing jobs have literally disappeared. An embarrassment to our country and it's horrible.

The Doxology ... that testimonial to the Platonic Trinity, which divided the Roman Empire into at least eighteen quarreling sects, none of whom knew what they were fighting about, and which schisms contributed to the decline and fall of this greatest of states. Rome had thrived for one thousand years with pagan gods at the helm and expired after only one hundred and fifty years under the Christian banner.

As great edifices collapse of their own weight, so Heaven sets a similar limit to the growth of prosperous states.

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.

The parliamentary principle of decision by majorities only appears during quite short periods of history, and those are always periods of decadence in nations and States.