This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, arteries harden. Every year, there are more referees and fewer doers. When you've had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.

There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off.

Sometimes, a smooth process heralds the approach of atrophy or death.

The death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past - no matter how good it was.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

On September 28 the fleet hove in sight, and all came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. The local "fyrd" had been called out this year four times already to watch the coast, and having, in true English style, come to the conclusion that the danger was past because it had not yet arrived had gone back to their homes.