Rory Groves > Quotes

“Those still attending church are not passing their faith on to their children. Various studies indicate that the vast majority of youth abandon the faith of their parents after leaving high school.60 For some denominations the situation is more dire: a report by the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life in 2002 found that 88 percent of children from evangelical homes leave the church within two years of graduating from high school.61 Add to that the rapidly declining number of practicing parents, and it isn’t difficult to predict the implosion of traditional religion in America within a relatively short time.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Paper is poverty. It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.”20”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“The butcher, baker, and candlestick maker have been around a lot longer than supermarkets and Walmart. —Joel Salatin”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“The first compulsory education attendance laws were passed in Massachusetts in 1852. For the first time since freedom-seeking pilgrims settled on American shores, it became illegal to educate one’s own children in the home.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“may not always be so if we continue to deplete our soils. Similarly, we are discovering that through over-reliance on efficiency we have enriched ourselves at the cost of depleting our social capital. Perhaps this is why, 230 years after Slater’s mechanized cotton mill, we are beginning to see a reversal of industrial trends in certain aspects of life, namely, education, food, and fertility.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“If Solomon was correct that “a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children,”9 what do the wicked leave behind?”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Addressing a New York teacher’s association in 1909, soon-to-be-president Woodrow Wilson touted the progressive vision for public education in America: For we want to do two things in modern society. We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.82”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“So how did we get here? What or who cracked the foundation? While there are many causes, people, events, and philosophies that we could point to over a period of several centuries, there is only one that cannot be ignored. It’s what historians call the “watershed event in human history”: the Industrial Revolution.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“As a group, 59 percent of millennials have never married, compared to 10 percent of their grandparents. Why bother with divorce statistics when couples aren’t getting married in the first place?”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Out of wedlock births have increased to 57 percent of births, up from 5.3 percent in 1960.53 That’s a 10-fold increase in two generations. Delaying and avoiding marriage has also coincided—and likely caused—a collapse in childbearing.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Factory production also meant the end of the apprenticeship system—the primary method of skill transfer for thousands of years—and with it the opportunities for mentorship and discipleship. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, The apprentice system was in vogue, and all parts of a trade were then taught where it is now usual and needful to teach but a single branch. The youth who aspired to become a shoemaker might, for instance, during his period of apprenticeship, acquire knowledge of every step from the tanning of the leather to its embodiment in the finished shoe.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“According to the CDC, the birthrate “has generally been below replacement since 1971.”55 In summary, Americans are abandoning marriage and child-rearing.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Design your business around your family, not the other way around. Instead of asking, “What am I good at?” ask “What are we good at?”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“initial experiments in free, state-run schools were not altogether successful. The citizens of Massachusetts overwhelmingly rejected public schooling, perceiving it as violating their personal liberties and parental rights.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Why have prices skyrocketed only in the last century, after several centuries of relative stability? The answer lies in a pivotal event that occurred in 1913: the passage of the Federal Reserve Act by Congress, and the establishment of a privately-owned central bank, granting the Federal Reserve the exclusive power to issue money. Each quarter the Federal Reserve Board meets and decides whether to raise or lower the rate at which it lends money to other banks. Its stated objective is to achieve 2 percent inflation in consumer prices every year. When inflation falls below 2 percent, the Fed drops interest rates, encouraging more borrowing and spending.”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time

“Homosexuality, pedophilia, and polygamy are in fact old practices; ancient. These practices fell under intense condemnation following the collapse of Rome and the rise of Christianity in the West. Only in the last generation has opinion been overturned. The landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling on Obergefell v Hodges, codifying homosexual marriage into national law, was in hindsight a predictable conclusion to the dissipating trend of traditional Christian understanding of marriage, family, and life in America. Is collapse imminent, far off, or has it already happened? Looking at stock market rallies, technological breakthroughs, and ever-increasing material abundance, it would seem unlikely that collapse has already occurred. But material abundance, along with its sister decadence, is a lagging indicator. The institutions and social contracts that have supported our way of life for centuries—marriage, family, faith, community and morality—have been utterly decimated. While it is true modern efficiencies continue to increase, the stock that maintains it has been depleted. As Rod Dreher has said, The West has lost the golden thread that binds us to God, Creation, and each other. Unless we find it again, there is no hope of halting our dissolution. . . . The shadow of the Enlightenment’s failure to replace God with reason has”
― Rory Groves, Durable Trades: Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time