Michael J. Knowles Quotes

There's such cultural rot taking place, such a disintegration throughout our culture. Values, morality, you name it. Standards have been relaxed, and people are not being held to them. People's intentions, if they're said to be good and honorable, that's all that matters.

Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.

It is only when the hearts of the Women are in the mud, that the People are destroyed.

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

The painful truth is that in its attempt to remain 'morally neutral,' Hollywood is causing us to raise a nation of cads and harlots... Thanks again, Sean Penn!

Gleeful, unembarrassed ruthlessness, once rightly kept in check, has become normal among us, and 'Game Of Thrones' is a success because this change is now more or less complete.

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

At the rate America is decaying morally, we shall have to change our national symbol from an eagle to a vulture.

Avalanches of evil begin with a single pebble of sin.

A sign of a culture that has lost its faith - Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.

Dishonor is like the Aaron's Beard in the hedgerows; it can only poison if it be plucked.

People drift from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes thinkable as the years move on.

Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly - if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.

When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.

No one every suddenly became depraved.

A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything.

If the world suffers from mental deterioration or from moral degradation, then something goes wrong at the very root of civilization or culture. Even though that civilization may drag out for a considerable period, it grows less and less vital and ultimately tumbles down.

I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

The newspaper has debauched the American until he is a slavish, simpering, and angerless citizen; it has taught him to be a lump mass-man toward fraud, simony, murder, and lunacies more vile than those of Commodus or Caracalla.

To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.

Even a little untruth destroys a man, as a drop of poison ruins milk.

What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom!

Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted. I don't accept it.

There's been cultural rot since there's been culture.

A depraved culture supports a depraved politics and vice versa.