Systemic Collapse Quotes

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder

The revolution eats its own. Capitalism re-creates itself.

... trade in derivatives poses a mega-catastrophic risk ... derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole economic system.

Empires implode from within due to their own excesses.

The rapid decay of our currency, the extinction of public spirit, the increasing rapacity of the times, the want of harmony in our council, the declining zeal of the people, the discontents and distresses of the officers of the army, and, I may add, the prevailing security and insensibility to danger are symptoms, in my eye, of a most alarming nature.

In my view, what really counts here, as our political system falls apart before our very eyes, where voters really feel like they've been thrown under the bus, for good reason, and where they are dropping out of these two corporate-sponsored political parties.

What is the system? It revolves around the banks, the system is built on the power of the banks, so it can be destroyed through the banks.

Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth.

Without destruction of the State, there is no revolution.

Was the Soviet Union reformable? I would say no. They said, 'Okay, the Soviet Union isn't working.' They would say, 'No, it's great. We just need democracy, political pluralism, private property.' And then there was no Soviet Union. The European Union is the same.

Liberalism is unsustainable. When things go wrong in liberalism they pile more liberalism on top. Pretty good example of what's wrong with the US budget, US healthcare. Liberalism breaks it. Government breaks it. They pile more liberalism on top of it until it eventually implodes, like Obamacare is going to, or like Social Security is going to. All of these things, they're not sustainable, because liberalism isn't.

We have a devastated city and devastated souls ... The transition from communism to democracy proved to be a bomb that blew us up.

Often, when I became a consultant to a federal agency, that precipitated its demise.

The old decadent, worm-eaten liberalism is finished

Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.

An AIG failure would have been devastating to the financial system and to the economy.

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent. ... Something's eventually going to happen. Government will bloat until it chokes us to death, or one more tyrannical power grab will turn out to be one too many. ... Maybe it'll be one more round of "reasonable gun control" or one more episode of burning children to death to save them from "child abuse." Whatever, something will snap.

The fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism.

The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.

Lack of outlets, excess capacity, complete deadlock, in the end regular recurrence of national bankruptcies and other disasters--perhaps world wars from sheer capitalist despair--may confidently be anticipated. History is as simple as that.

It is when empires begin to fall, that they tend to cause the most mayhem.

Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible.

I'm a dad, and I no longer see a way for my kids to even inherit the money that I'm making, let alone go out there, have an idea, and create it in their own lifetime.

The U.S. increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as 'failed states.'

Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism.