The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival Quotes

“Decadence is a moral and spiritual disease, resulting from too long a period of wealth and power, producing cynicism, decline of religion, pessimism and frivolity. The citizens of such a nation will no longer make an effort to save themselves, because they are not convinced that anything in life is worth saving.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of the Age of Intellect is the unconscious growth of the idea that the human brain can solve the problems of the world. Even on the low level of practical affairs this is patently untrue. Any small human activity, the local bowls club or the ladies’ luncheon club, requires for its survival a measure of self-sacrifice and service on the part of the members. In a wider national sphere, the survival of the nation depends basically on the loyalty and self‑sacrifice of the citizens. The impression that the situation can be saved by mental cleverness, without unselfishness or human self-dedication, can only lead to collapse.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“If we are considering the history of our own country, we write at length of the periods when our ancestors were prosperous and victorious, but we pass quickly over their shortcomings or their defeats. Our people are represented as patriotic heroes, their enemies as grasping imperialists, or subversive rebels. In other words, our national histories are propaganda, not well balanced investigation.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“The Age of Intellect is accompanied by surprising advances in natural science. In the ninth century, for example, in the age of Mamun, the Arabs measured the circumference of the earth with remarkable accuracy. Seven centuries were to pass before Western Europe discovered that the world was not flat. Less than fifty years after the amazing scientific discoveries under Mamun, the Arab Empire collapsed. Wonderful and beneficent as was the progress of science, it did not save the empire from chaos.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“Alternatively, there are ‘political’ schools of history, slanted to discredit the actions of our past leaders, in order to support modern political movements. In all these cases, history is not an attempt to ascertain the truth, but a system of propaganda, devoted to the furtherance of modern projects, or the gratification of national vanity.

Men can scarcely be blamed for not learning from the history they are taught. There is nothing to learn from it, because it is not true.”
― John Bagot Glubb غلوب باشا, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“The first direction in which wealth injures the civilization is a moral one…The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honour or service, but cash…The Arab moralist, Ghazali (1058-1111), complains…[that students] no longer attend college to acquire learning and virtue, but to obtain those qualifications which will enable them to grow rich.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“Men are interminably different, and
intellectual arguments rarely lead to
agreement. Thus public affairs drift from bad
to worse, amid an unceasing cacophony of
argument.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“Many of the foreign immigrants
will probably belong to races originally
conquered by and absorbed into the empire.
While the empire is enjoying its High Noon
of prosperity, all these people are proud and glad to be imperial citizens. But when decline
sets in, it is extraordinary how the memory
of ancient wars, perhaps centuries before, is
suddenly revived, and local or provincial
movements appear demanding secession or
independence. Some day this phenomenon
will doubtless appear in the now apparently
monolithic and authoritarian Soviet empire.
It is amazing for how long such provincial
sentiments can survive.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival