Ethical Deterioration Quotes

The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.

If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.

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.

Let's acknowledge that America's increasing decadence is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When we tolerate trash on television, permit pornography to invade our homes via the Internet, and allow babies to be killed at the point of birth, we are inflaming radical Islam.

Man is not born wicked; he becomes so, as he becomes sick.

Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven.

When the thinking of a people becomes corrupt, the pure silver becomes impure in its hands.

The world is grown so bad, That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.

There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.

Over the past two decades, we have clearly seen an erosion of ethical values.

Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross, he sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.

Avalanches of evil begin with a single pebble of sin.

The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension.

I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout

No one every suddenly became depraved.

We are suffering from a kind of slow-motion barbarization from within.

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

Selfishness is much more than an ordinary problem because it activates all the cardinal sins! It is the detonator in the breaking of the Ten Commandments.

If there's anything to learn from the history of movies, it's that corruption leads to further corruption, not to innocence.

Once we start thinking of ourselves as polluted, there is not much incentive to behave well, and the trip down the slippery slope is likely.

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

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

Furthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards.

A depraved culture supports a depraved politics and vice versa.