Deterioration Quotes

“The "pathology of normalcy" rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology and arranged the means to give satisfactions which fit the pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation, in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.”

“The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.”

“When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration.”

“The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.”

“The whole process of life is a process of deterioration in which everything—and this is the most cruel law—continually gets worse.”

“If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.”

“Education has nothing whatever to do with moral deterioration; and if one must admit that it develops a resolute spirit among the people, that is far from being a defect.”

“There was no whimsical ‘sip of wine at Thanksgiving’ for us kids while we were still teenagers. This was the Clinton era, and my parents were already worried about the moral deterioration of the country.”

“Living on through loss seems by contrast as bad or worse; it means experiencing environmental deterioration, steady decline in human well-being, and increasing constraint on future human action consciously and slowly while realizing that they are likely to continue for generations after one is gone.”