Life's better with the Conservatives†don't let Labour ruin it.

-Anonymous
  Conservative Party general election slogan.

A ruinöyet what ruin! from its mass Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza143.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Oceanöroll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruinöhis control Stops with the shore.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza179.

As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone, And hides the ruin that it feeds upon, So sophistry, cleaves close to, and protects Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.

-Cowper,William
  Poems,'The Progress of Error', l.285^8.

In friendship false, implacable in hate: Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.173^4.

For those whom God to ruin has designed, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.

-Dryden,John
  The Hind and the Panther, pt.3, l.1093^4.

Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! Confusion on thy banners wait, Tho'fanned by Conquest's crimson wing They mock the air with idle state.

-Gray,Thomas
  The Bard.  A Pindaric Ode, l.1^4.

Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from th'ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.44^8.

There are three roads to ruinöwomen, gambling and technicians.The most pleasant is women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.

-Pompidou, Georges
  In the SundayTelegraph.

   Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.87^90.

The rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension, of the society.On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.11, conclusion.

Hope has often caused the love of gain to ruin men.

-Sophocles
Antigone, 222 (translated by H Lloyd-Jones,1994).

He could not have invented his own ruin, Had he despaired, with more propriety.

-Webster,John
  TheWhite Devil, act 5, sc.1.

The new industrial revolution is a two-edged sword. It may be used for the benefit of humanity, assuming that humanity survives long enough to reach a period in whichsuch a benefit ispossible.If, however, we proceed along the clear and obvious lines of our traditional behavior, and follow our traditional worship of progress and the fifth freedomöthe freedom to exploitöit is practically certain that we shall have to face a decade or more of ruin and despair.

-Wiener, Norbert
  The Human Use of Human Beings.