Penn & Teller TV - Charles Baudelaire - Friedrich Nietzsche - J G Ballard - Ernest Hemingway - Oscar Wilde -
We’ve been to other countries: we really hated the lack of decadence. Decadence is freedom with a smile. Penn & Teller: Bullshit! s5e8: Mount Rushmore s5e8, Showtime 2007
The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance. Charles Baudelaire
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence. J G Ballard
Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. Ernest Hemingway
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Oscar Wilde