Jodi Picoult Quotes

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.

The whole social structure is now tumbling down, dethroning its God, undermining all its certainties. All this, wonderfully enough, is being done in the name of the health, wealth, and happiness of all mankind.

There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.

A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.

Historically, if you look at great civilizations, why do they crumble? Is it because of what's outside or because of something internal? It's always internal. It is.

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

It turned out that the country was helpless in the face of a new reality.

When Americans are faced with the prospect that they can never earn their way to wealth, they have two choices: to rebel against the system, or to settle into depressed complacency.

In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.

What is the world coming to?

Is there a point at which we hit a tipping point and all of this economic, cultural and moral trouble sends us into a death spiral we can't get out of?

The faltering of our suburban living arrangement is probably certain. The response of suburbanites is not. Will they elect maniacs who promise to make America just like it was in 1997? Will there be a desperate attempt to sustain the unsustainable by authoritarian measures? Will the institutions of order and justice fail in the process?

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

The foundations of society have cracked as a result of the revolutionary reforms....The definitions and boundary lines of good and evil have disappeared.

What began as a political protest turned into a class war and a racial pogrom.

The election of any man avowing the principles of Mr. Jefferson would ... destroy religion, introduce immorality and loosen all the bonds of society.

I sometimes wonder what use there is in trying to protect the West against fancied external threats when the signs of disintegration within are so striking

I don't think people understand the awesomeness of the destruction of this country - its institutions, its infrastructure, its law, its morals.

I think that, in the '60s, you had lots of things going on in the culture which tended to decrease attraction to marriage, attraction to religion, and which tended to increase attraction to crime.

It is possible for great nations to rot from within.

All political institutions will end sooner or later. The question is when and how.

We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction, or infamy. We kill when, because it is easier, we countenance, or pretend to approve of atrophied social, political, educational, and religious institutions, instead of resolutely combating them.

We tolerate without rebuke the vices with which we have grown familiar.

America is laughing her way to Hell.