When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.

Sandburg’s remark frames cultural and political decline as a failure of collective memory. “Where they came from” points to a people’s origins—founding ideals, shared struggles, inherited institutions, and the hard-won habits that once sustained civic life. When a society “loses sight” of what carried it forward, it becomes unmoored: tradition is discarded without understanding, achievements are taken for granted, and public purpose thins into short-term appetite or factionalism. The quote functions as a warning against amnesia—historical, moral, and civic—suggesting that continuity with formative experiences is not nostalgia but a stabilizing resource. It also implies that renewal begins with recollection: recovering the stories and principles that once generated resilience and cohesion.