Bret Easton Ellis Quotes

Well, this is the end of Western civilization.

America is on her deathbed.

I am studying ancient civilizations, trying to find what happened to them, finding out why they went into a decline, why they died.

Every generation has a macabre notion that wars, government prohibition, natural disasters or mankind itself could be the downfall of society and the world as a whole.

History: the category of human phenomena which tends to catastrophe.

France is perilously close to its final moments.

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

Most societies die of suicide, not attack.

We are living in dangerously weird times now. Smart people just shrug and admit they're dazed and confused. The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.

Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal.

Our political system cannot stop the degradation of our culture.

A nation never falls but by suicide.

Bigger things than the State will fall, all religion will fall.

Society itself is responsible for the degradation.

America is in such trouble.

When I was young I used to read about the decline of Western civilization, and I decided it was something I would like to make a contribution to.

On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.

Was it a sign of Creeping Decrepitude?

From the failure of the humanist tradition to participate fully or to act decisively, civilizations may perhaps crumble or perish at the hands of barbarians. But unless the humanist tradition itself in some form survives, there can really be no civilization at all.

To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.

All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.

I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf.

The coach has turned into a pumpkin and the mice have all run away.

I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.