Corrupts Quotes & Sayings

The whole macho thing has to be reexamined. Because in my view, the Bush administration was weak, not strong. To engage in a policy of torture is a weak policy. Because ultimately, it encourages the terrorists. It undermines our own values. It corrupts our system. And it doesn't get good intelligence. — Alex Gibney

Sin defies God, utterly corrupts each individual, corrodes all social relationships, and issues in death. — D. A. Carson

Too many terms corrupts politicians so they only want to be reelected. — Alice Paul

Occult Theft,
Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,
corrupts the body and soul of man, to the last fibre of them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists — John Ruskin

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom. — Michel De Montaigne

One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite. — Jorge Luis Borges

As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue. — Germaine Greer

Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely. — Jacques Barzun

For time corrupts even the most innocent — Laura Thalassa

Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn't achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing. — Cherie Blair

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is what makes information valuable. For knowledge to be useful, it must be acted upon. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1834 - 1902). All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797) A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950). We must never take our freedom for granted. — Al Zelczer

Dear mourners,' he begins, 'let me first tell you that truth must always be spoken, no matter that it hurts. For truth untold is wicked, damning. It corrupts, begs rebellion. Rebellion being the right of those who are themselves corrupted. It becomes the way of their truth, and, without it, they are dead. — Peter Gray

Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind. — Thomas Jefferson

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it. — Francis Bacon

Art corrupts. Absolute art corrupts absolutely. Please corrupt me absolutely. — Robert Black

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. — David Brin

Success corrupts character when a person loses the spirit of thankfulness. — Orrin Woodward

We must overthrow the material and moral conditions of our present-day life ... We must first purify our atmosphere and completely transform the milieu in which we live; for it corrupts our instinct and our will, and constricts our heart and our intelligence — Mikhail Bakunin

Many evils spring from power," he said. "Even from the power to do good. All power corrupts, and the intention to do good has little influence on the corruption. Either my words will last after me and be believed by men, or else they won't. Yet if one thing were required to kill them certainly, it is that my words should be spread after my death by the power of money. No teaching could survive a campaign of paid advertising. — Nevil Shute

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. — Eric Hoffer

Knowledge is a dangerous thing. But ignorance is no protection. — Masha Du Toit

War is a kind of superstition, the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending. — Rafael Correa

But ignoring the bad things makes you end up believing that bad things never happen. You are always surprised by them. It surprises you that guns kill, that money corrupts, that snow falls in winter. — Julian Barnes

The industry is littered with self-styled purists who believe the business of media.. the requirement to make a profit.. somehow corrupts the craft. — Lachlan Murdoch

Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul. — Leo Tolstoy

If absolute power corrupts absolutely,
does absolute powerlessness make you pure? — Harry Shearer

The welfare state corrupts family life. Even Democrats have acknowledged the destructive consequences of the welfare state on the underclass. It has rendered vast numbers of male unnecessary to females, who have looked to the state to support them and their children (and the more children, the more state support) rather than to husbands. In effect, these women took the state as their husband. — Dennis Prager

We cannot use the Ruling Ring. That we now know too well. It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil. Its strength, Boromir, is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own. But for them it holds an even deadlier peril. The very desire of it corrupts the heart. Consider — J.R.R. Tolkien

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty. — Immanuel Kant

What chiefly concerns and alarms many of us are the problems arising from religious fanaticism. As long as large numbers of militant enthusiasts are persuaded that they alone have access to the truth, and that the rest of us are infidels, we remain under threat. Lord Acton's famous phrase about power can be used of another danger. Dogma tends to corrupt, and absolute dogma corrupts absolutely. — Anthony Storr

A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others. — Ayn Rand

The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular. — Edward Gibbon

Maybe I'm just tired. (Geary)
People only say that when they're not really willing to deal with the issue at hand. It's like when you ask a guy what he's thinking and he says 'nothing' but in reality you know he's checking out another woman and he doesn't want you to give him grief over it. It's Thia's theory. (Tory)
I think you need to stay away from her before she corrupts you. (Geary)
Nah, it's too much fun. She has the most misguided views on everything. But I think what I just said is one of the few lucid thoughts she's ever managed. (Tory) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts. — Clint Eastwood

Do not be deceived: bad company corrupts good morals. — Anonymous

The old order changes, giving place to the new... least on good custom should corrupts the world. — Alfred Tennyson

The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience. — Paul Fussell

But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary. — Robert A. Caro

Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favored by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.1 Leopold von Ranke — Joachim Fest

Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret. — Daniel Schorr

The indigenous peoples of the great tourist spots seem to lose their souls. All cultural, religious, and political efforts and ideals are crippled since the culture is engaged only in luring ever more tourists. It is not the contact with an essentially foreign population that corrupts the inhabitants of the great foreign resorts. It is the contact with great masses of people who are seeking fir the moment only well-being and not salvation that weakens and devalues the indigenous population. — Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

Self-deception is like this. It blinds us to the true causes of problems, and once we're blind, all the "solutions" we can think of will actually make matters worse. Whether at work or at home, self-deception obscures the truth about ourselves, corrupts our view of others and our circumstances, and inhibits our ability to make wise and helpful decisions. — The Arbinger Institute

The will to power, as the modern age from Hobbes to Nietzsche understood it, far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. — Hannah Arendt

The story being told in 'Star Wars' is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not. — George Lucas

It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible. — Frank Herbert

Politics is shit; it corrupts everything it touches ... — Charles Stross

He always says that those who control the present can rewrite the past. — Anne Fortier

If knowledge is power and power corrupt, does knowledge corrupt? — James Moore

The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it. — Mary Parker Follett

She's vicious,' Miss Stein said. 'She's truly vicious, so she can never be happy except with new people. She corrupts people. — Ernest Hemingway,

Knowledge is power, isn't that what we say? But power corrupts. An institution based on knowledge and learning can't help but be a corrupt institution. — Sam Cabot

Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. — Samuel Johnson

Too much power is never a good thing. It corrupts even the strongest. — Lara Adrian

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. — Eric Hoffer

The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable. — Chinua Achebe

Speech doesn't corrupt. Money corrupts, and money isn't speech. — Russ Feingold

Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated. — Alveda King

While fasting, people refrain from fulfilling their basic desires for food, drink and sexual relations. This shows them that their mission in this religion is to control their desires and not allow their desires to control them and to overcome their desires and not be overcome by them. By doing so they take the path of self-rectification and do not fall into that which corrupts them. — Habib Umar Bin Hafiz

There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts. — Bayard Rustin

All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely. — Lawrence Durrell

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.... — Edward Gibbon

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them. — Plato

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat. — John F. Lehman Jr.

Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind. — Edmund Burke

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

You wouldn't know what it's like to grow up privileged and powerful. It's intoxicating. Watching how people defer to you, and to your parents. Power reeks from your pores, and it infects people around you. Power corrupts, envelops, entices . . . The more powerful my father becomes, the more he fears losing it. — Robert Bryndza

Words fail.... As a grudging admission, after much denial, that even as we try to preserve and create, through, with, in language, whatever is beautiful or scandalous in our lives, language fails because it falsifies. Like money, it corrupts the very possibilities it creates. Words after all the first currency. ... In trying to say what we mean, we end up saying something else. ... And yet, we have nothing else but words. — Ramon C. Sunico

Anxiety, as neuropsychologists today tell us, is toxic; our brains are wired to avoid anxiety. Anxiety corrupts the chemistry of the brain and leads us to depart (emotionally or physically) from others to protect ourselves. Jesus's words to his disciples "to fear not" (Luke 8:50 NRSV) become of utmost significance. Anxiety is so acidic that it is nearly impossible to have relationship, to be a place-sharer, where the air is poisoned with it. Bonhoeffer's calm and composure, even on the first day, signaled to the boys that he had no anxiety, no worry about lessons being unfinished or others thinking he was a failure. His composure signaled to them that it might be that he is really just here for them, rather than to fulfill some goal that they could frustrate (like getting them through the material). Bonhoeffer's composure tacitly indicated to the boys that he was more loyal to their concrete persons than any end others sought for them. — Andrew Root

Love corrupts and absolute love corrupts absolutely. The unreasonable systems of men, that is. — Silvia Hartmann

Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action. — Will Durant

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. — George Orwell

Money does not corrupt people. What corrupts people is lack of affection ... Money is simply the bandage which wounded people put over their wounds. — Margaret Halsey

Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth
that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud. — Thomas Szasz

In the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn't or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past. — Virat Kohli

Should I pity so and so?" I asked. I gave his name but he delights so in giving it himself that I feel there is no need to give it for him.
"No. He's vicious. He's a corrupter and he's truly vicious."
"But he's supposed to be a good writer."
"He's not," she said. "He's just a showman and he corrupts for the pleasure of corruption and he leads people into other vicious practices as well. — Ernest Hemingway,

You might have good, moral efforts of working hard and earning money in order to help feed the poor or something along those lines - and then you get the money you've been seeking and you see and feel and taste how sweet it is and you only want more and more and more for ... yourself.
Money corrupts its own intentions. — Cole Ryan

The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it. — Joshua Reynolds

Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts it absolutely. Consider the way color film usually renders blue sky, green foliage, lipstick red, and the kiddies' playsuit. These are four simple words which must be whispered: color photography is vulgar. — Walker Evans

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. — George Orwell

What, then, was the difference between America and Moscow? The "muckraker" said it was a question of who owned the state. In America the people were supposed to own it, but most of the time the big businessmen bought it away from them. "It is privilege which corrupts politics," was his phrase. — Upton Sinclair

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners. — Benjamin Banneker

It may be that hope misleads. But hate - hate corrupts. I have been too quick to hate. I become like what I abhor. — Stephen R. Donaldson

All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste. — Joseph Joubert

Money corrupts so, best give it to the already corrupted. — Apostolos Doxiadis

Doctors need to be held accountable, since power corrupts. There must be complaints procedures and litigation, commissions of enquiry, punishment and compensation. At the same time if you do not hide or deny any mistakes when things go wrong, and if your patients and their families know that you are distressed by whatever happened, you might, if you are lucky, receive the precious gift of forgiveness. — Henry Marsh

Comradeship is part of war. Like alcohol, it is one of the great comforters and helpers for people who have to live under unbearable, inhuman conditions. It makes the intolerable tolerable. It helps us cope with filth, calamity, and death. It anaesthetizes us. It comforts us for the loss of all the amenities of civilisation. Indeed, its loss is one of its preconditions. It receives its justification from bitter necessities and terrible sacrifices. If it is separated from these, if it is exercised only for pleasure and intoxication, for its own sake, it becomes a vice. It makes no difference that it brings a certain happiness. It corrupts and depraves men like no alcohol or opium. It makes them unfit for normal, responsible civilian life. Indeed, it is at bottom, an instrument of decivilisation. The general promiscuous comradeship to which the Nazis have seduced the Germans has debased this nation as nothing else could. — Sebastian Haffner

Absolute truisms rot brains absolutely.[ ... ]'Power corrupts' is useless as a tool for understanding the past, and gives us nothing as a guide to action. — Steven Brust

Awaken your heart to kindness and mercy for the people and love and tenderness for them. Never, never act with them like a predatory beast which seeks to be satiated by devouring them, for the people fall into two categories: they are either your brethren in faith or your kindred in creation ... Do not ever say, 'I have been given authority' or 'My command should be obeyed.' Because it corrupts the heart, consumes one's faith, and invites calamities. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

It is not just power, but impotence, that corrupts people. It gives them the mind and soul of slaves. It makes them indifferent, lazy, cynical, irresponsible, and, above all, stupid. — John Holt

Once you allow anyone to terrorize you, you will be terrorized all your life. Terror corrupts. Pretty soon you'll be terrorizing others ... Life doesn't mean anything if you can't rid yourself of fear. — Martha Albrand

The Left corrupts everything it touches — Dennis Prager

The News-writer lies down at Night in great Tranquillity, upon a piece of News which corrupts before Morning, and which he is obliged to throw away as soon as he awakes. — Jean De La Bruyere

The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls. — Francois Fenelon

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

Power corrupts on an equal-opportunity basis. — Jacqueline Novogratz

There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts. — Jiang Qing

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best. — Edward Abbey

But for the Jews this moral-spiritual issue raises the same societal problem it does for the Greeks: how can a man have the "right" to make himself spiritually or rationally destitute or retarded when this corrupts the whole quality of the culture that we all together need and depend on? If anyone wants a cloistered and closed-minded life, an anti-aristic life, let him either go off and live among the wolves-or else join the community of like-minded idiots that (alas) compose and define the basic terms of modern society. — Kenny Smith