Bad Manners and Their Cause – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"In life, a decent person has so many ways to get ahead. A bad guy with the same smarts and drive has all those same ways open to them, but also some others that a decent person wouldn't go down. So, they have more chances to get ahead. As a result of this negative selection of character, the higher social classes become enriched with scoundrels. The better and more influential a social class is, the worse its average ethical level becomes. Only this circumstance can explain why the world has not been a paradise for at least five thousand years. One must know this if one wants to understand world history." Hermann Julius Oberth

"The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey." Walter Lippmann