It is almost a general rule that nations do not decline gradually. Instead they fall abruptly from their greatest heights.

The second corruption of the state is oligarchy (oligos = few), in which the military elite is narrowed down to a few ruling families of immense wealth and prestige, who now openly flaunt their wealth and possessions.

A totalitarian dictatorship cannot explain; it can only suppress.

Fragmentation occurs when a civilization is in decline.

A culture is not only the language and the arts of a people. It is all their history, all their hopes for the future.

Sometimes societies die and putrefy long before they are pronounced dead, and sometimes men die of corruption long before they have taken to their deathbeds.

For domination has nothing whatsoever to do with good government, and power as an end in itself destroys good government.