When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
— Frederic Bastiat
Relaxing Power Corrupt quotations
Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: (1) those who are intellectually blind; (2) those who are blinded by ethnicity; (3) those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands; and finally (4) those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses.
We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends -- the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.
Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
It is not power that corrupts but fear.
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
the old axiom that 'all power corrupts' has doubtful validity, because it derives from our neglect of Plato's advice to find men carefully and train them by methods which make them fit for heroes.
If humanity has any hope of effecting real change for the better, it will not come from the Madison Avenue false reality makers who've cast Barack Obama as the savior of the world. To alter our course from tyranny to liberty, to defeat the corrupt elite, we must get past the puppets and confront the real power structure of the planet.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.
Irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty, and must corrupt those who exercise it.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
Injustice and corruption will never be transformed by keeping them hidden, but only by bringing them out into the light and confronting them with the power of love.
The Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. After all, we have already corrupted the world with power and greed....which hasn't gotten us anywhere - now's the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants.
Power doesn't corrupt. It's neutral. Someone always wants to corrupt power. It's the way a shotgun is not a deadly weapon until someone chooses to use it irrationally.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.
I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.
Then there is the worst part of Christianity, which is awful: power, corruption, manipulation... But then again, these feature are ever present in any organization.
The government is so out of control. It is so bloated and infested with fraud and deceit and corruption and abuse of power.
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
The IRS has become morally corrupted by the enormous power which we in Congress have unwisely entrusted to it. Too often it acts like a Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens.
Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
Lokpal Bill alone is not adequate to fight corruption.
We need a comprehensive anti-corruption code in this country. The UPA Government has developed a powerful anti-corruption frame work consisting of eight new Central laws...... This is not about one Bill, this is about a frame work and we want to deliver that frame work to the country
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God??
The great corrupter of public men is the ego - corrupter because distracter.
Wealth, sensuality, power cannot hold a candle to it. Looking in the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.
Great men are almost always bad men.
The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
Black Power is a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can't win... the view that American society is so hopelessly corrupt and enmeshed in evil that there is no possibility of salvation from within.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people... The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.