Please help me with this quote

M

MEF

New member
Friends:

During a recent move, I made the grievous mistake of discarding several inspiring quotations that decorated the walls in my office. I've been able to recover most of them, but one continues to elude me. It's particularly significant given the ongoing across the board erosion of our rights.

I think the quote is by Disraeli or Churchill (or some other British PM?!). Here's the best paraphrase I can reconstruct (I'm sure I screwed this up royally!):

"Men, like nations, move from
tyranny to hope,
from hope to rebellion,
from rebellion to freedom,
from freedom to abundance,
from abundance to complacency, and
from complacency to servitude."

What is the correct quotation and who said (wrote) it?
 
This is the version I have. Don't know if it's the right one.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From 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 into bondage.

The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic
Alexander Fraser Tyler (1748 - 1813)
 
JJR:

Many thanks!

That must be the original source (although I wouldn't put it past a more recent Pol to take credit for it).

BTW, only eight minutes elapsing from the original post to your reply is most impressive!
 
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