I don't know the origin of this quote, but I've seen this in a few places, and it really seems to explain things very well:

'Each of the great civilisations of the world passed through a series of stages from their birth to their decline to their death.

Historians have listed these in ten stages:

Bondage to spiritual faith, great courage to liberty, to abundance to selfishness, to complacency to apathy, to moral decay to dependence, and back to bondage.'



...Sadly, modern western civilisations currently seem to be at the end of stage 9, going into 10.