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Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms. -- Aristotle
I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination. -- Scott Adams
The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time. -- Luis Bunuel
It's amazing to hear, as a voice matures and then starts to decline, what kind of emotion is still conveyed by a really good vocalist. -- Tom Wopat
The Endangered Species Act is the strongest and most effective tool we have to repair the environmental harm that is causing a species to decline. -- Norm Dicks
What is at a peak is certain to decline. He who shows his hand will surely be defeated. He who can prevail in battle by taking advantage of his enemy's doubts is invincible. -- Cao Cao
Nobody wanted to touch Decline III when they found out what it was about. -- Penelope Spheeris
I actually picked up copies of Decline I and II at a flea market once. I walked out without paying. -- Penelope Spheeris
Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself. -- Susan Sontag
Decline III, I funded myself, from the studio money. That, and I sold a lot of drugs. Kidding. Don't print that. -- Penelope Spheeris
Labour leaders lead us all, though we know they bleed us all. Cheer our new Decline and Fall, Gibbon might have dreamed it all. -- Noel Coward
Every historian has a vested interest. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth? -- Peter Greenaway
Those movies, Decline I and II and Suburbia, are dearly loved, but they never made any money. I didn't even have the rights for some of them. -- Penelope Spheeris
The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on't. -- Mary Astell
Osbert was the only one who didn't seem suspicious. He was so interested in the Decline of Western Civilization that he missed the version of it taking place under his nose. -- Meg Rosoff
The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands, because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political. -- Penelope Spheeris
Decline and Fall was a very depressing Evelyn Waugh novel, I think it was his first. I didn't get it at all, and then I got to love Waugh. And I think that maybe "Cosmopolitans" has a bit of an Evelyn Waugh vibe to it at some point. -- Whit Stillman
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I decline to accept the end of man. -- William Faulkner
I decline all noisy, wordy, confused, and personal controversies. -- Josiah Warren
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It's moving in the right direction. It was in decline under the previous administration. -- John Prescott
Life is apogee, apex, decline; life is death - and everything else is open to discussion. -- Colin Farrell
Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline. -- Harriet Beecher Stowe
Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever. -- John Keats
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together. -- Jean de la Bruyere
Success comprises in itself the seeds of its own decline and sport is not spared by this law. -- Pierre de Coubertin
The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief. -- Sigmund Freud
It may be coincidence that the decline of newspapers has corresponded with the rise of social media. Or maybe not. -- Ryan Holmes
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality. -- Muriel Spark
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality. -- Muriel Spark
But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them. -- Pete Seeger
When a noble life has prepared for old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality. -- Madame de Stael
Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice. -- Moshe Dayan
You could say people are living longer because of the decline in religion. Not many people believe in the hereafter, so they keep going. -- Cyril Clarke
Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline. -- Philip Roth
We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation. -- Franz von Papen
There's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline. -- John Podhoretz
All testify to the coercion and sacrifice which culture imposes on man. To rely on them and deny the decline is to become even more firmly caught in its fatal coils. -- Theodor Adorno
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty. -- George Santayana
Coming to know one another based on a shared humanity through dialogue is the key to breaking down the walls of isolation and reversing the decline of life-to-life bonds among human beings. -- Vinessa Shaw
It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero. -- Dick Schaap
My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language. -- James Thurber
There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment - and you start to decline. -- Andy Grove
Perhaps Western civilization is in a post-decline phase, or maybe the decline is just taking a really long time, like the Roman Empire's did. The Romans had gladiators and Christian-hungry lions and that sort of thing. We have MTV. -- Tom Shales
These days the American dream of home ownership has turned into a nightmare for millions of families. They wake every day to the reality of a horrible decline in the value of the home that has meant so much to them. -- Mortimer Zuckerman
We have been filled with grief as we have witnessed the decline of the North American Church that was once filled with missionary zeal and yet now seems determined to bury itself in a deadly embrace with the spirit of the age. -- Peter Akinola
If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable. -- Edward R. Murrow
Every time a woman leaves the workforce because she can't find or afford childcare, or she can't work out a flexible arrangement with her boss, or she has no paid maternity leave, her family's income falls down a notch. Simultaneously, national productivity numbers decline. -- Madeleine M. Kunin
In New York, if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker's party, women will flock to your side, assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image. -- Sloane Crosley
You look at most artists, the arc of their career, there's a definite decline at the end. And that decline could set in at any time. In your 50s, or your 60s and 70s if you're lucky. Time goes by fast, and you've got to be busy all the time. -- Seth
The partisanship surrounding space exploration and the retrenching of U.S. space policy are part of a more general trend: the decline of science in the United States. As its interest in science wanes, the country loses ground to the rest of the industrialized world in every measure of technological proficiency. -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history. -- Noam Chomsky
While I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I bet that the number of homosexual people per thousand has not fluctuated all that much over the centuries. I do not believe the dented wisdom my father used to extol, that homosexuality was a sure sign of a civilization in decline. -- Henry Rollins
Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history tend to involve decline, a fall from grace, the loss of God's favor, corruption. -- Jill Lepore
Working with lots of old media clients, I've had a front-row seat on the ascension of new social players and the decline of traditional news outlets. And it's clear to me that old media has an awful lot to learn from social media, in particular in five key areas: relevance, distribution, velocity, monetization, and user experience. -- Ryan Holmes
Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s. -- Camille Paglia
I decline to go fox hunting. -- Princess Diana
I was never a believer in decline. -- Max Gallo
Societies in decline have no use for visionaries. -- Anais Nin
Fragmentation occurs when a civilization is in decline. -- Robert Payne
A civilization is always judged in its decline. -- Melvin B. Tolson
Every state funeral that shines is on its decline -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All languages had their birth, their apogee and decline. -- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
I can't bear Britain in decline. I just can't. -- Margaret Thatcher
Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice. -- William Faulkner
I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement. -- Oscar Wilde
When morals decline and good men do nothing, evil flourishes. -- J. Edgar Hoover
I definitely believe that the so-called American decline is greatly exaggerated. -- Al-Waleed bin Talal
The standard of living of the average American has to decline. -- Paul Volcker
Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
By use you possess gain; by disuse you decline and lose. -- Edwin Louis Cole
I cannot resign myself to the decline of Europe, and of France. -- Jacques Delors
A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession. -- Emile M. Cioran
My life is a stairway to heaven, not a 'decline into decrepitude. -- Jane Fonda
I decline to buy repentance at the cost of ten thousand drachmas. -- Demosthenes
We need to find three Saudi Arabias just to offset [the] decline. -- Matthew Simmons
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline. -- John Ruskin
Tremendous interest in the superficial is very characteristic of cultures in decline. -- Martin Amis
The success of Darwinism was accomplished by a decline in scientific integrity. -- W. R. Thompson
I decline to accept Hebrew mythology as a guide to twentieth-century science. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The greatest problem America faces is the decline of middle class incomes. -- Charles Schumer
The rise of the ecologist almost exactly parallels the decline of the naturalist. -- Paul Sears
The overall quantity of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline slowly. -- John Burroughs
Alzheimer's usually comes later than AIDS, but I decline to call that progress. -- Mason Cooley
Since the decline of record companies and music sales, I've always played live. -- Adam Ant
I believe any decline would lock in a Fed increase with some certainty. -- Bruce Bartlett
There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline. -- Edward Abbey
I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire. -- Winston S. Churchill
The first sign on a declining civilization is a decline in the arts. -- Diana Palmer
We can't coherently deny, or even decline to affirm, that we are free. -- Allen W. Wood
It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%. -- Benjamin Graham
Thank you, but we respectfully decline your overture, being more enjoyably occupied at present. -- Laini Taylor
The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
While farmers' markets are booming in cities, actual rural market towns are in decline. -- Jasmine Guinness
Possessing the ideal makes a person nervous: you sense the inevitable decline just ahead. -- Garrison Keillor
When gross public debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP, economic growth tends to decline considerably. -- Kevin McCarthy
Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
The acceptance of homosexuality is the last step in the decline of Gentile civilization, -- Pat Robertson
Walking is the only way proven to stave off cognitive decline - it works. -- Dan Buettner
The unions may continue to decline, but if they do, it'll be their fault. -- Jacques Delors
You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline -- Phil Gramm
The ideal of progress, freedom of thought, and the decline of ecclesiastical power go together. -- J. B. Bury
The beginning of the decline of the Republic was the day they air-conditioned the Capitol. -- Howard Baker
A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal. -- Ted Turner
If inflation-adjusted interest rates decline in a given country, its currency is likely to decline. -- Ray Dalio
I think that the world is in a very serious decline - very, very serious. -- Michal Rovner
Pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives. -- Neil Diamond
If I have to climb to heaven on a ladder, I shall decline the invitation. -- Mercedes McCambridge
The decline and fall of a civilization is barely noticed by most of its citizens. -- James Cook
Artists now decline to go to bed with beauty, fearing they'll wake up with kitsch. -- Mike Curran
Deflation is defined as a general decline in prices, with emphasis on the word 'general.' -- Ben Bernanke
Television, although It's in steep decline, still occasionally gives voices to people who don't have voices. -- Christopher Eccleston
Psychedelics are probably responsible for every aspect of human evolution apart from the decline in bodyhair. -- Terence McKenna
We will either bring on another American century, or we are doomed to witness America's decline. -- Marco Rubio
Be assured that I did not become the Mayor of Chicago to preside over its decline. -- Jane Byrne
Before then, Britain was pessimistic and the role of government was largely managing Britain in decline. -- George Jones
The honour of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality. -- Haruki Murakami
This cream will help one's nature strengthen and grow, The diet gives support in my decline. -- Du Fu
The truly free man is he who can decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse. -- Jules Renard

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