Corrupted Quotes & Sayings

Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality. — Baron De Montesquieu

Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ... are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends. — Walter Lippmann

And I'm glad to see that all three clients are male. Not that the females can't be corrupted, I've just always found the males more amenable to temptation. The males have always had all the power, so that does much to explain it. As they say: Easy pickings. — Geoffrey Wood

I have my misgivings about 3-D. I don't like the lack of blacks and whites, how it dulls the image, how the color gets corrupted. I don't necessarily like the experience of having heavy glasses in front of me. — Alfonso Cuaron

After the 1960s and '70s, there were real doubts about whether a mortal man could handle the country's highest office. It had destroyed Johnson, corrupted Nixon, and overwhelmed Ford and Carter. — Nancy Gibbs

Even cohabitation has been corrupted - by marriage. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Many people who live in big countries like ours thought that we had resources that would work for us for many, many years, but that was a mistake. Our natural wealth corrupted us. In this country, you were among the first to raise environmental issues. In Russia, despite all of its problems today, people are concerned about the environment, and it's become a central issue on the agenda. — Mikhail Gorbachev

A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The U.S. financial markets had always been either corrupt or about to be corrupted. — Michael Lewis

I have always considered Christianity as the strong ground of republicanism. The spirit is opposed, not only to the splendor, but even to the very forms of monarchy, and many of its precepts have for their objects republican liberty and equality as well as simplicity, integrity, and economy in government. It is only necessary for republicanism to ally itself to the Christian religion to overturn all the corrupted political and religious institutions of the world. — Benjamin Rush

[Theseus] soon found himself involved in factions and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty. — Plutarch

My wide eyes make me look much younger without make-up, and although it's fun to have a line in innocence corrupted, I doubt I'll get to play the vampy vixen or a Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth. — Talulah Riley

Developer: bgwoo Corrupted — Adrian King

Wisdom is corrupted by ambition, even when the quality of the ambition is intellectual. For ambition, even of this quality, is but a form of self-love ... — Henry Taylor

truth is, I look upon both candidates in the same light; and should think myself a traitor to the constitution of my country, if I voted for either. If every elector would bring the same consideration home to his conscience, we should not have such reason to exclaim against the venality of pts.5 But we are all a pack of venal and corrupted rascals; so lost to all sense of honesty, and all tenderness of character, that, in a little time, I am fully persuaded, nothing will be infamous but virtue and public-spirit. — Tobias Smollett

Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is corrupted unless it moves. — Ovid

Culture attracts the worst impulses of the moneyed, it has no honor, it begs to be suburbanized and corrupted. — Thomas Pynchon

Everything that the Bible identifies as sin and our nature recognizes as such is something essentially good gone wrong. More precisely, it is something God has made that we have corrupted. Augustine defined the essence of sin as being curved in on ourselves — Michael S. Horton

Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned. Kell had seen what happened when power warred with the body, watched it darken in the veins of corrupted men, turning their blood from crimson to black. If red was the color of magic in balance---of harmony between power and humanity---then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint. — V.E Schwab

I am pure of heart and mind," I told her. "I cannot be corrupted. — Jim Butcher

Absolute power has corrupted and the absence of checks and balances seems complete. — Patricia Cornwell

They can kill, harm, exile, imprison, destroy/ defame a person but not an idea. They can co-opt/ corrupt a person but not an idea. An idea that becomes a collective movement & ideology. A collective ideology cannot be killed, harmed, exiled, imprisoned, destroyed, defamed, co-opted or corrupted. This shall always prevail and stay as an ideology of the people collectively. — Jeroninio Almeida

The result of these ungodly unions was a race of very wicked and very powerful hybrid (half-fallen angel, half-human) offspring - the Nephilim - who corrupted, harassed, even killed mankind. Now, at the end of the 20th century, we have the return of "alien" entities with apparent supernatural powers. — Chuck Missler

The notes on the flash drive showed a steady progression into dementia, a deteriorating mental state directly linked to incidents of exposure to Sovereign. There must have been some kind of field generated by the vessel; some kind of radiation or emission. Something that had destroyed and corrupted Qian's mind when he went to study it in person. It had affected Edan, too, though the transformation was more subtle. The batarian had begun acting differently from the moment he first visited the site of the artifact: consorting with humans, risking the wrath of the Spectres. Edan probably hadn't even been aware of the changes, though looking back it was obvious to Saren. — Drew Karpyshyn

We enjoy some gratification when our good friends die; for though their death leaves us in sorrow, we have the consolatory assurance that they are beyond the ills by which in this life even the best of people are broken down or corrupted. — Saint Augustine

Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood. — William Shakespeare

In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace.
All things are corrupted and decay in time; Saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books. — Richard De Bury

In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today's China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of 'virtue' or law. — Patrick Mendis

Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves. — David Garrick

The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and persecuted as unpatriotic. — Albert Einstein

Religions become corrupted when leaders are assigned to explain God's will to people instead of showing them how to find this direction within themselves. — James Redfield

Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual. — Aristotle.

For only the humans were endowed with the lust for power so strong that the raw passion of their nature could be easily corrupted. — Margaret Weis

Something in her demanded victimization and terror, so she corrupted my dreams, led me into dark places I had no wish to explore. It was no longer clear to me which of us was the victim. Perhaps we were victims of one another. — Anna Kavan

In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects contribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than all the precepts of the philosophers and divines. — E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl Of Halifax

The history of mankind," said Dreed, "has been a history of betrayals, the perennial betrayal of the common man by the men he has trusted."

"By the men the lazy, haphazard, childish oaf was too wilfully stupid to mistrust," said Bodisham. "The history of mankind from the very beginning has been a history of over-trusted trustees, corrupted by their unchecked opportunities. — H.G.Wells

Politics is corrupting the American judicial system in much the same way the judicial system was corrupted in Nazi Germany. — Benjamin Carson

Bitcoin is not "unregulated". It is regulated by algorithm instead of being regulated by government bureaucracies. Un-corrupted. — Andreas Antonopoulos

We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent. — Jason Whitlock

Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the 'intelligence' that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness? — Ariel Dorfman

There was something shameful about surviving sorrow. You were corrupted. She was corrupted. She was no good anymore. She was inauthentic, apocryphal. She wanted to be a seeker and to travel further and further. But after sorrow, such traveling is not a climbing but a sinking to a depth leached of light at which you are unfit to endure. And yet you endure there. — Joy Williams

Love is a powerful tool, and maybe, just maybe, before the last little town is corrupted and the last of the unroaded and undeveloped wildness is given over to dreams of profit, maybe it will be love, finally, love for the land for its own sake and for what it holds of beauty and joy and spiritual redemption that will make [wilderness] not a battlefield but a revelation. — T. H. Watkins

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude. — Emile M. Cioran

The book is the only medium left that hasn't been corrupted by the profane. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nations will march towards the apex of their greatness at the same pace as their education. Nations will soar if their education soars; they will regress if it regresses. Nations will fall and sink in darkness if education is corrupted or completely abandoned — Simon Bolivar

What got me excited to do Grima Wormtongue is when I was young I went through a period in boarding school were I was picked on alot. And there is something about Grima, he has been picked on when he was a kid, he (Grima) is so distrustful, he is so easily corrupted, He is so ugly, and he wants somebody, he wants to love somebody, and he can't, because nobody will have him. — Brad Dourif

Passionate attachment to another nation produces a variety of evils ... the illusion of common interests where no real common interests exist; adopting the enmities of the other; and participation in the quarrels and wars of the other without any justification. Still another evil is that such a passionate attachment gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens the facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country. — George Washington

Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds" — John Owen

But a further question arises: Is passion different from reason also, or only a kind of reason; in which latter case, instead of three principles in the soul, there will only be two, the rational and the concupiscent; or rather, as the State was composed of three classes, traders, auxiliaries, counsellors, so may there not be in the individual soul a third element which is passion or spirit, and when not corrupted by bad education is the natural auxiliary of reason? Yes, he said, there must be a third. Yes, I replied, if passion, which has already been shown to be different from desire, turn out also to be different from reason. But that is easily proved: - We may observe even in young children that they are full of spirit almost as soon as they are born, whereas some of them never seem to attain to the use of reason, and most of them late enough. Excellent, — Plato

It is not just software glitches and corrupted memory cards that should be on the minds of election officials. Hackers pose another very real problem whereby an election could be tilted towards a favored candidate. — Bob Barr

The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success. — Julian Baggini

Do you believe in the concept of forgiveness? In the possibility of redemption? In the value of every human life, no matter how tainted or corrupted?" "Fuck no," Bull said. "I think it is entirely possible to go so far into the red you can't ever balance the books." "Sounds — James S.A. Corey

Power has always corrupted, my dear. Even the promise of power. It is a hard thing to look at through the fence for hundreds of years without wondering what it would be like on the other side. — Ally Carter

If life doesn't seem livable with the body's nature corrupted, not even with every sort of food and drink and every sort of wealth and every sort of rule, will it then be livable when the nature of that very thing by which we live is confused and corrupted, even if a man does whatever else he might want except that which will rid him of vice and injustice and will enable him to acquire justice and virtue? — Plato

The first time he consulted me, I caught a glimpse of my salvation. He made a gift to me of the very thing that I - too corrupted by my bourgeoise blood to renounce it- could not be, merely by tacitly agreeing to be my client, simply by frequenting my waiting room on a regular basis, with his ordinary docile manner of a patient who makes no fuss. Later he gave me another gift, magnanimously, that of his conversation. Worlds hitherto unknown to me suddenly appeared, and the very thing that my flame had always coveted so ardently, and had despaired of ever obtaining, was suddenly mine, thanks to him, vicariously. — Muriel Barbery

A fresh dream-fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him ! To his corrupted eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhausted by our life! And, truly, see how at first sight everything is cold, morose, as though ill-humoured among us ... Poor things! thinks our dreamer. And it is no wonder that he thinks it! Look at these magic phantasms, which so enchantingly, so whimsically, so carelessly and freely group before him in such a magic, animated picture, in which the most prominent figure in the foreground is of course himself, our dreamer, in his precious person. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's very hard to operate on a general philosophy of power. They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I don't agree with that. I think you have to be corrupted to be corrupted by power. — Mark Pellegrino

Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets. — Richard M. Weaver

I appeal to women not to let themselves become corrupted by male power. Emancipation is something more than a 'ticket' to serve in the army. — Petra Kelly

Those corrupted by the pursuit of power, despite another's attempt at unspoiled love, cannot be rescued from the darkness that devours the soul — Christy Hall

Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.
Jane Austen's Letters August 1796 — Jane Austen

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done. — Jean-Paul Sartre

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. — George Orwell

If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I want him to be my Edward -- taking care of me, always. Watching over me, day or night, unsleeping. Keeping me safe, by his side. Caring for me with a passion so pure it can't be corrupted by time or distance or seduction. I know Edward is only fiction. But that doesn't have to mean love like his can only be found in books and movies or rooted in the misty world of dreams. — Ellen Hopkins

But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. Moreover, a people becomes avaricious and luxurious by prosperity. — Augustine Of Hippo

Liberals fostered the subsidies that have converted so many citizens to helplessness. They have made high taxes and big government a way of life. They have corrupted the politicians into believing that in order to be elected to office, they must dispense benefits. — James Cook

The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived ... — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I hated her; I wanted her to burn, the way so many of the corrupted had burned, because she'd put her hold on them. But wanting cruelty felt like another wrong answer in an endless chain. — Naomi Novik

You would be surprised at how many corporations "none of your business" applies to! — Steven Magee

An infinite number of real parts of time, passing in succession, and exhausted one after another, appears so evident a contradiction, that no man, one should think, whose judgement is not corrupted, instead of being improved, by the sciences, would ever be able to admit of it. — David Hume

The truth is that our minds are corrupted by sin. Not just a little bit, but deeply, down to the depths as far as we can perceive, and beyond. And not just grossly, so that it is easy to figure out where we went wrong, but subtly, delicately, invisibly. If we think we know and appreciate how far we have gone wrong, we are still deceiving ourselves at this point also. — Vern Sheridan Poythress

Let me tell you that the children from their very birth are born to evil. Satan seems to have control of them. He seems to take possession of their young minds, and they are corrupted. Why do fathers and mothers act as though a lethargy was upon them? They do not mistrust that Satan is sowing evil seed in their families. — Ellen G. White

Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well. — Timothy Snyder

Although I respect the Judeo-Christian ethic, as well as the Eastern philosophies, and of course the teachings of Muhammad, I find that organized religion has corrupted those beliefs to justify countless atrocities throughout the ages. Were I to go to church, I'd be a hypocrite. — Danny Masterson

How do you greet a god? If there's an etiquette guide for that, I haven't read it. I'm never sure if I'm supposed to shake hands, kneel, or bow and shout, "We're not worthy!" I knew Hermes better than most of the Olympians. Over the years, he'd helped me out several times. Unfortunately last summer I'd also fought his demigod son Luke, who'd been corrupted by the Titan Kronos, in a mortal combat smack-down for the fate of the world. Luke's death hadn't been entirely my fault, but it still put a damper on my relationship with Hermes. I decided to start simple. "Hi. — Rick Riordan

In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs' attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives' attitudes about contemporary culture. We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs' importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT's cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people's English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails: We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else. — David Foster Wallace

The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

Elmo found, as have many, that the death of the heart corrupted the pen into writing a farrago of horrors and insanities, not necessarily the less true for their seeming extravagance, but inaccessible for the most part to the prudent. — Robert Aickman

As the years progress and we experience more and more, the mini-narratives that make up our lives are distorted, corrupted, so that every one of us is left with a false history, a self-created fiction about the live we have led. pg 163 — Michelle Richmond

You start by allowing your own world to be corrupted by their warped values, and then you gradually start using their sadistic methods and eventually end up adopting bits of their sick ideology. And even then, when you have become just like them, they will eventually turn on you anyway. Normal people are savage beasts. — Frank Portman

The Republic is six months old, and it's flying apart. It has no cohesive force - only a monarchy has that. Surely you can see? We need the monarchy to pull the country together - then we can win the war."
Danton shook his head.
"Winners make money," Dumouriez said. "I thought you went where the pickings were richest?"
"I shall maintain the Republic," Danton said.
"Why?"
"Because it is the only honest thing there is."
"Honest? With your people in it?"
"It may be that all its parts are corrupted, vicious, but take it altogether, yes, the Republic is an honest endeavor. Yes, it has me, it has Fabre, it has Hebert - but it also has Camille. Camille would have died for it in '89."
"In '89, Camille had no stake in life. Ask him now - now he's got money and power, now he's famous. Ask him now if he's willing to die."
"It has Robespierre."
"Oh yes - Robespierre would die to get away from the carpenter's daughter, I don't doubt. — Hilary Mantel

We are foolish, comic, motionless, corrupted, yet we are worthy of sympathy too. — James Joyce

Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; — Anonymous

The manly pride of the Romans, content with substantial power, had left to the vanity of the East the forms and ceremonies of ostentatious greatness. But when they lost even the semblance of those virtues which were derived from their ancient freedom, the simplicity of Roman manners was insensibly corrupted by the stately affectation of the courts of Asia. — Edward Gibbon

Weaned from all passing fancies, let my soul praise You, O God, Creator of all. You did not allow my soul to remain attached to corruptible things with the glue of love, attached to what my senses find pleasing. For things we are attached to go where they will, then they cease, leaving the lover torn with corrupted longings. — Augustine Of Hippo

A politician's goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power. — Dean Koontz

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived ... (Bk2:3) — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market. In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society. — Ai Weiwei

It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual
and after all what is an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one with the greatest ease
As many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the lie of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself," he repeated. — Aldous Huxley

Success is a sort of metaphysical experience. I live exactly as I did before - only on a slightly bigger scale. Naturally, I won't be corrupted. I'll sit there in my Rolls, uncorrupted, and tell my chauffeur, uncorruptedly, where to go. — Tom Stoppard

Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia. — Thomas Merton

John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place which was making great computers for people to use. — Steve Jobs

He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn't try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders.
...
The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted — Richard Yates

Other sovereign democratic states have central governments more corrupted other than our own, but most can fall back on unifying elements we lack: common ethnicity, a shared religion, or near-universal consensus on many fundamental political issues. The United States needs its central government to function cleanly, openly, and efficiently because it's one of the few things binding us together. — Colin Woodard

What was it about a season's first snowfall, Mariam wondered, that was so entrancing? Was it the chance to see something as yet unsoiled, untrodden? To catch the fleeting grace of a new season, a lovely beginning, before it was trampled and corrupted? — Khaled Hosseini

And you're wrong about something, Don. It's not vampire blood that corrupts - it's whether the person who drinks it is corrupted to begin with. — Jeaniene Frost

Resentment has the potential to consume many who appear to be otherwise blameless. Unresolved caged resentment that one day breaks free and kills all of the delicate innocence in the yard. Acidic, rancorous resentment has gears for teeth that are perfectly oiled by bitterness and possess a judgment unable to discern the corrupted from the good. — Kenn Bivins

Since we nowadays think that all a man needs for acquisition of truth is to exert his brain more or less vigorously, and since we consider an ascetic approach to knowledge hardly sensible, we have lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity. Thomas says that unchastity's first-born daughter is blindness of the spirit. Only he who wants nothing for himself, who not subjectively 'interested,' can know the truth. On the other hand, an impure, selfishly corrupted will-to-pleasure destroys both resoluteness of spirit and the ability of the psyche to listen in silent attention to the language of reality. — Josef Pieper

Bree arched, trying to stretch out her muscles and Alessandro gave her a dirty look as if she was displaying herself to him on purpose. Well, maybe she was a little. Even though he blocked her from the hotel attendant's gaze with his body in the doorway, Bree was sure to cover herself with the blanket. Alessandro turned around, pulling in the tray with him and his eyes flared hungrily as he looked down at her. "You look like a beautiful debauched angel," he said, his voice rough with desire. "And you're what, the demon that's corrupted me?" Bree asked raising an eyebrow and letting the blanket fall down to her waist, baring her to him. "It's my life's work, you know?" Alessandro grinned, going down on to his knees and leaning over her. Bree placed a hand on his chest, halting him. "Is that coffee, I smell?" she asked. "The debauched angel is kind of hungry." She bit her lip and smiled up at his frustrated face. — E. Jamie