Degenerating Quotes

#1. Are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?

James Madison

#2. One may rationally stick to a degenerating research programme until it is overtaken by a rival and even after. What one must not do is to deny its poor public record ... It is perfectly rational to play a risky game: what is irrational is to deceive oneself about the risk.

Imre Lakatos

#3. A society based on Christian principles provides for pluralism, but with enough restrictions to prevent civilization from degenerating into chaos.

Benjamin Hart

#4. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans - of their subsequent degenerating - of the decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings.

Mary Shelley

#5. Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God.

Ingmar Bergman

#6. Prayer is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. How to get things from God occupies most [books].

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#7. Willpower doesn't change everything. We can't be just anything we want to be. My mother couldn't will herself to be like she was when she was thirty or forty. She couldn't choose to be normal - her muscles were degenerating.

Darcy Leech

#8. As soon as any idea is a consolation the tendency to falsify it becomes strong: hence the traditional problem of preventing the idea of God from degenerating in the believer's mind.

Iris Murdoch

#9. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.

Arthur Conan Doyle

#10. I've got an L3 bulging disk and degenerating disk. It's bulging in two places. Yeah, it's not good.

Retief Goosen

#11. In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts

Imre Lakatos

#12. Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare.

Charles Krauthammer

#13. I know of nothing that is so degenerating and so dangerous as idleness, for the brain will seek out mischief.

Francis M. Lyman

#14. In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.

Fernando Pessoa

#15. At 49, I find it a little bit difficult to run these days. I've got grade four tears in both Achilles, shin splints, I got no cartilage the toes in my right foot, I've got bone marrow edemas under both knees, I've got one degenerating hip - that's the problem you get.

Russell Crowe

#16. Psychological observations of the prisoners have shown that only the men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influences.

Viktor E. Frankl

#17. Then consider the Middle (and later the New) Comedy and what it aimed at - gradually degenerating into mere realism and empty technique.

Marcus Aurelius

#18. It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.

Ian McEwan

#19. Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

Elie Wiesel

#20. Every government is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution.

Samuel Johnson

#21. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

Viktor E. Frankl

#22. Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government ... can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.

George Washington

#23. I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news

John Muir

#24. If we think of the novel and the epic ... The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero
a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character.

Jorge Luis Borges

#25. I think bravery is a lot less formal than it sounds. Bravery is being able to have a conversation with a stranger. It's going back to school even after years of being away. It's being you even when it's easier to be someone else.

Marquita Burke-DeJesus

#26. Being Bob Marley's son has done many things for me, in terms of having a career in music. I'm very proud of my music, and I'm very proud of where I'm from. People hear that I'm Bob Marley's son, and they turn on my music to listen just out of curiosity.

Damian Marley

#27. The opposite of theism is not atheism, it's idolatry.

Kyle Idleman

#28. Yeah, actually, gamers in the house forever.

Thomas Pynchon

#29. Combine two words, Myth and History. What do you get? Mystery.

Ashwin Sanghi

#30. What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset