Industrial management in a republic / by H. W. Prentis, jr. A Newcomen Publication, 1943

by Prentis, H. W. (Henning Webb), b. 1884
[Princeton, : Printed at the Princeton University Press, 1943]

 

Source: A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always 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 complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.

This passage actually comprises two quotations, which didn't begin to appear together until the 1970's.[2] The list beginning "From bondage to spiritual faith" is commonly known as the "Tytler Cycle" or the "Fatal Sequence". Its first known appearance is in a 1943 speech "Industrial Management in a Republic"[3] by H. W. Prentis, president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers. The quote appears to be original to Prentis. No original author can reliably be determined for the first paragraph. It is possible that ''[[whoever first made the statement was paraphrasing or]] drawing a conclusion from the quotation given'' by Bartleby at the link listed below.