"The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
- from spiritual faith to great courage;
- from great courage to liberty;
- from liberty to abundance;
- from abundance to selfishness;
- from selfishness to complacency;
- from complacency to apathy;
- from apathy to dependency;
- from dependency back again into bondage.

. . . a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."

Sir Alex Faser Tytler (1742-1813), Professor Universal History, Edinburgh University, 1801 lecture collection.