Quotes & Sayings About Power Corruption

When people who are seeking change start out, they are driven by commitment to a cause. But as internecine power struggles take over, one-time idealists fall prey to corruption. They become just as corrupt and manipulative as the system that they want to overthrow. — Anurag Kashyap

Fear is what created the monster in the room, and in order to overcome the many problems and enslavements that we have today, it is not about getting rid of the monster, but about getting rid of the fear. — Evita Ochel

I have done many impious things
no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes. — Robert Graves

Kid gets caught with marijuana, that kid has a police record. A Wall Street executive destroys the economy, $5 billion settlement with the government, no criminal record. That is what power is about. That is what corruption is about. And that is what has to change in the United States of America. — Bernie Sanders

Power required corruption, and corruption rewarded power. — V.E Schwab

The corruption in Iraq has nothing to do with ideas - it has to do with the regime and institutional structures and power. — Elliott Colla

People power must be combined with good governance to bring about real, deep and lasting change. This combination can achieve almost everything from eliminating corruption to ending malnutrition and illiteracy. — Narendra Modi

It's very simple. If the American people care about a lot of things including corruption in government, then, in fact, if you use the power to appoint in order to do political business, to clear fields, to save your party money and so on, if it's not a crime - and I believe it is - it certainly is business as usual, politics of corruption. — Darrell Issa

Power does not alter a man's character. It merely reveals it. — Carlos Fuentes

The heartbreak of runaway corruption, abuse of power and indefensible criminality by our government and media should, must inspire all good we-the-people Americans to wake the hell up from the embarrassing curse of apathy and start demanding constitutional accountability from our elected employees. How radically non-sheep of me. — Ted Nugent

Look, we know we screwed up when we were in the majority. We fell in love with power. We spent way too much money - especially on earmarks. There was too much corruption when we ran this place. We were guilty. And that's why we lost. — Eric Cantor

Naked power has its limitations, since power is a generator of corruption and corruption in its turn tends to dilute the effectiveness of power. — Robert Payne

The two national powers that dominated the colonies, France and Britain, represented two different models of corruption. Britain was seen as a failed ideal. It was corrupted republic, a place where the premise of government was basically sound but civic virtue - that of the public and public officials - was degenerating. On the other hand, France was seen as more essentially corrupt, a nation in which there was no true polity, but instead exchanges of luxury for power; a nation populated by weak subjects and flattering courtiers. Britain was the greater tragedy, because it held the promise of integrity, whereas France was simply something of a civic cesspool. — Zephyr Teachout

Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it. — Frank Herbert

Agent Jones switched to the big screen and a grainy video of MoMo sitting at his enormous desk, a swivel-hipped Elvis clock ticking behind his bewigged head. 'Death to the capitalist pigs! Death to your cinnamon bun-smelling malls! Death to your power walking and automatic car windows and I'm With Stupid T-shirts! The Republic of ChaCha will never bend to your side-of-fries -drive -through-please-oh-would-you-like-ketchup-with-that corruption! MoMo B. ChaCha defies you and all you stand for, and one day, you will crumble into the sea and we will pick up the pieces and make them into sand art. — Libba Bray

That no matter how good their intentions, with absolute power comes corruption. — Gennifer Albin

When God is here spoken of as hardening some of the children of men, it is not to be understood that God by any positive efficiency hardens any man's heart. There is no positive act in God, as though he put forth any power to harden the heart. To suppose any such thing would be to make God the immediate author of sin. God is said to harden men in two ways: by withholding the powerful influences of his Spirit, without which their hearts will remain hardened, and grow harder and harder; in this sense he hardens them, as he leaves them to hardness. And again, by ordering those things in his providence which, through the abuse of their corruption, become the occasion of their hardening. Thus God sends his word and ordinances to men which, by their abuse, prove an occasion of their hardening. — Jonathan Edwards

There is just too much cruelty, selfishness and corruption in the world not to want to crush the poisonous will of those who cause it by writing about it as powerfully as I can. — Carla H. Krueger

Deception and privileged secrets are common facets of politics. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

It is a doctrine, as I believe, taught us in Holy Writ, that when a man is saved by divine grace, he is not wholly cleansed from the corruption of his heart. When we believe in Jesus Christ all our sins are pardoned; yet the power of sin, albeit that it is weakened and kept under by the dominion of the new-born nature which God doth infuse into our souls, doth not cease, but still tarrieth in us, and will do so to our dying day. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

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

Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed. — Wally Lamb

Power does not corrupt; it merely elevates the degree in which something is done that has already been pursued. — Felix O. Hartmann

-The very absence of the freedom to criticise against your own or any other government is all the more a reason to loudly shout-out for democracy! If that is wrong, Drew boldly went on, -then I would rather be wrong then to be numbered among the majority of the so-called righteous people whose only mandate seems to be controlling people. If a government is against its people expressing themselves, then that government is obviously hiding something criminal from its people and the world, and it is therefore afraid of being exposed and losing whatever power it has. — Andrew James Pritchard

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty. — Walter Raleigh

I'll confess that I don't watch the Olympics, but you'd have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the corruption and the expense. An amorphous organization with no transparency, unclear lines of responsibility, huge amounts of politics and a great deal of unearned power. — Seth Godin

Lijuan warned Raphael I'd make him a little bit mortal.'
'You have.' Quiet equanimity. 'And you worry you've weakened him. You have.'
Elena flinched. 'Elena.'
Shaking his head, Keir waited until she met his gaze again. 'Even an archangel needs a weakness - absolute power is a corruption. — Nalini Singh

A vibrant civil society can challenge those in power by documenting corruption or uncovering activities like the murder of political enemies. In democracies, this function is mostly performed by the media, NGOs or opposition parties. — Evgeny Morozov

Power can be hoarded by the mighty or stolen from the innocent.Power provides the ability to choose. But has a proclivity for corruption. The use of power is not to be taken lightly, for it is never without consequence. — Emily Thorne

Instead of Passover pointing backward to the great sacrifice by which God had rescued his people from slavery in Egypt, this meal pointed forward to the great sacrifice by which God was to rescue his people from their ultimate slavery, from death itself and all that contributed to it (evil, corruption, and sin). This would be the real Exodus, the real "return from exile." This would be the establishment of the "new covenant" spoken of by Jeremiah (31:31). This would be the means by which "sins would be forgiven" - in other words, the means by which God would deal with the sin that had caused Israel's exile and shame and, beyond that, the sin because of which the whole world was under the power of death. — N. T. Wright

Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiousity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion for sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cess-pit of moral filth. — Philip Pullman

There's always someone bigger and badder who can knock you off your perch - even if you're me. Never forget it and you don't have to worry about corruption. You'll be too afraid with watching your own back.
Alexandria "Dria" McAndrews — C.J. Ellisson

From my keen observation, it is a very sad fact that the Philippines' current administration's drug war crisis has fully pressed the pedal of acceleration to more division, hatred, cycles of violence (copycat killings, summary killings, extra judicial killings, collateral victims of drug war), toxic revenge, and perpetual impunity. ~ Angelica Hopes, reflections on Drug War in the Philippines — Angelica Hopes

In the tired hand of a dying man, Theodore Senior had written: The 'Machine politicians' have shown their colors ... I feel sorry for the country however as it shows the power of partisan politicians who think of nothing higher than their own interests, and I feel for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time. — Edmund Morris

If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, then error will be. If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency. If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end. — Daniel Webster

The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us. — Eric Hoffer

The highest mode of corruption is the abuse of power. — Auliq Ice

In large commercial cities, the money power is, I fear irresistible. It is not by open corruption that it always, or even most generally, operates. — Roger B. Taney

It is no accident, then, that each of our major wars has served to enhance the power of government in Washington: the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. — Edward S. Greenberg

You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close. — David Baldacci

In practice it undermines the transformation of faith. When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions-whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettoes-they lose the outward thrusting, transforming power that is at the heart of the gospel. Instead of being 'salt' and 'light' -images of a permeating and penetrating action-Christians and Christian institutions become soft and vulnerable to corruption from within. — Os Guinness

Our God is a God of love. He waits with open arms, and the unfolding of His merciful plan of salvation is not only therefore the mark of divine power but also the mark of God's relentless, redeeming love. It is a point well worth pondering because, among other reasons, it will help us to understand better why God, through the prophets, denounces sin and corruption in such scalding terms. He loves all of us, His spirit sons and daughters, but hates our vices. His denunciation of those vices may, if we are not careful, seem to obscure the enormous and perfect love He has for us. — Neal A. Maxwell

To centralize power in the name of freedom is akin to putting a crime syndicate in charge of rooting out corruption. It is the normal state of politics that the more centralized it is, the more damage it does. Fast-track authority [for government-to-government trade agreements] centralizes power and is therefore part of the problem. — Llewellyn Rockwell

I've an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers. I am no longer capable of loosing my head in love, Ambition has been crushed in me by circumstances, but it has come out in another way, for ambition is nothing but a lust for power and my chief delight is to dominate those around me. To inspire in others love, devotion, fear - isn't that the first symptom and the supreme triumph of power? To cause another person suffering or joy, having no right to do so - isn't that the sweetest food of pride? — Mikhail Lermontov

The tragedy is that in the name of resisting the internal deterioration of faith and the corruption of the world around them, many Christians - and Christian conservatives most significantly - unwittingly embrace some of the most corrosive aspects of the cultural disintegration they decry. By nurturing its resentments, sustaining them through a discourse of negation toward outsiders, and in cases, pursuing their will to power, they become functional Nietzscheans, participating in the very cultural breakdown they so ardently strive to resist. — James Davison Hunter

When any one person or body of men seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one. — Jonathan Swift

In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water. — John Calvin

Others, however, perhaps overwhelmed by what they read, say Africa should be written off, that it's beyond repair. My experiences so far say we should put it in perspective. For instance, a new nation that has just won its independence from a colonial power struggles with internal graft and corruption, civil war and economic turbulence - more developed nations see it as a basket-case. Yet 200+ years later it emerges as the world's sole superpower. Yes, America. — Kevin Sites

Power cannot be maintained and effectively exercised without a moral structure accepted and practiced by all because power attracts the corruptible and because corruption destroys consensus. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

As you strive for personal effectiveness and leadership excellence, there are local and global questions that you will inevitably have to face. These range from poverty, corruption, terrorism, food security, scarcity of resources and overpopulation among others. Your power and influence for significance in leadership excellence will increase in direct proportion to your ability to find effective and sustainable practical solutions to some of these real-life challenges. — Archibald Marwizi

How can a school prepare you for murderers and mad-men?' Taro asked. 'Friends who would betray you to your death. People in authority who use their power to perform the most unnatural acts. People hating you because you can't do things you aren't supposed to be doing anyway. That's a lot to expect of a school. — Moira J. Moore

In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything. — Chinua Achebe

No nation went into oblivion or was destroyed because it had bad laws, or because its statesmen were not intelligent, but because of INTERNAL CORRUPTION, and because they could not maintain the POWER OF SELF-CONTROL. — Melvin J. Ballard

'Movement' sounded like Joy Division, but 'Power, Corruption & Lies' is the first New Order record. — Peter Hook

Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e'er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead. — Philip James Bailey

When the President does it , that means that it is not illegal. — Richard M. Nixon

People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped by influence, by power, by us. — Wendell Berry

I would miss the kindness of good people who were compassionate when so many were pitiless, who made their way through so much corruption without being corrupted themselves, who eschewed envy in a world of envy, who eschewed greed in a world of greed, who valued truth and could not be drowned in a sea of lies, for they shone and, by the light they cast, they had warmed me all my life. I would not miss the indifference in the face of suffering, the hatred, the violence, the cruelty, the lust for power that so many people brought to the pageant of humanity. — Dean Koontz

May be the power lies in the hands of the one who holds the gun ... so he just presses the trigger whenever the slightest streak of anger passes his mind ... and after a few haunting days he roams freely in the country without fear ..
and what about the one who faces the wrath and bears the bullets?
He leaves a movement behind ... but haven't such movements always been ephemeral?
Is death the price you need to pay to open the eyes of those who care but just for a couple of days? — Sanhita Baruah

The corporate government is heavily influenced by the utility company cartel. — Steven Magee

There is an undeniable web connecting incidents such as the rise to power of dictators... poverty and the perception of human beings as disposable property. — Beatrice Rose Roberts

Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands ... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and ... provide for their own safety and security. — John Locke

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power. — Clive James

The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language ... In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

Those in government are especially susceptible to the corruption of power, because government is institutionalized coercion. — George H. Smith

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. — Jacob Bronowski

Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history. — Noah Levine

I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy. — Nawal El Saadawi

We come out of Jewish-refugee, Holocaust stock, which means that our predecessors fled and we learned that systems of power are vulnerable to corruption and can treat the defenseless in a destructive fashion. — Eugene Jarecki

When God redeems us, He releases us from the guilt and power of sin, and restores us to our full humanity, so that we can once again carry out the tasks for which we were created. Because of Christ's redemption on the cross, our work takes on a new aspect as well- it becomes a means of sharing in His redemptive purposes. In cultivating creation, we not only recover our original purpose, but also bring a redemptive force to reverse the evil and corruption introduced by the fall. — Nancy Pearcey

I wonder if they were aware of the power of complimentary alcohol during World War I. — Pawan Mishra

How can one betray oneself to such a degree? What corruption greater even than power can lead us to thus deny the proof of pleasure, to hold in contempt that which we have loved? ... I could have written about chouquettes my whole life long; and my whole life long, I wrote against them. — Muriel Barbery

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with their
comrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. He will be withdrawn from the common law and will become untouchable; the more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful and
hated. When he is given the command of a group of unfortunates, with the right of life or death over them, he will be cruel and tyrannical, because he will understand that if he is not sufficiently so, someone else, judged more suitable, will take over his post.
Moreover, his capacity for hatred, unfulfilled in the direction of the oppressors, will double back, beyond all reason, on the oppressed; and he will only be satisfied when he has unloaded onto his underlings the injury received from above. — Primo Levi

Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government. — Thomas Jefferson

True understanding involves sincere honesty and holistic, deep listening without the political corruption of evil power players. ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my book K.H. trilogy — Angelica Hopes

I have a prejudice against people with money. I have known so many, and none have escaped the corruption of power. In this I am a purist. I love people motivated by love and not by power. If you have money and power, and are motivated by love, you give it all away. — Anais Nin

There is an interesting interplay between power corrupting and corruption empowering. The causality does not go one way. — Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and tum.
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not CatulIus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatredS.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs. — Robinson Jeffers

... In the discourse of today's financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scientists, technicians, and instruments are purchased not to find truth, but to augment power. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

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

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

For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life
food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power. — Barack Obama

That the hand of God was involved in the birth of the new nation he had no doubt. "It is the will of heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever." If the people now were to have "unbounded power," and as the people were quite capable of corruption as "the great," and thus high risks were involved, he would submit all his hopes and fears to an overruling providence, "in which unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe. — David McCullough

Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars, became common, while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent, affected supreme power under the seemly pretence of seeking the good of senate and people; citizens were judged good or bad, without reference to their loyalty to the republic (for all were equally corrupt); but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were esteemed good citizens, because they maintained the existing state of things. — Sallust

For he alone, as the only all-gracious Son of an all-gracious Father, in accordance with the purpose of his Father's benevolence, has willingly put on the nature of us who lay prostrate in corruption, and like some excellent physician, who for the sake of saving them that are ill, examines their sufferings, handles their foul sores, and reaps pain for himself from the miseries of another, so us who were not only diseased and afflicted with terrible ulcers and wounds already mortified, but were even lying among the dead, he has saved for himself from the very jaws of death. For none other of those in heaven had such power as without harm to minister to the salvation of so many. — Eusebius

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality. — Lord Acton

Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor. — Derrick A. Bell

From the earliest ages of history to the present day there have never been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear dangers from abroad ... It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power - that factions will be formed and liberty endangered ... — Andrew Jackson

I think the corruption of power is very interesting, and I think the idea that power is something that ... You know, when people want power, they're a certain individual. When people acquire power by accident, they're different again. — David Morrissey

The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough. — Andrew Jackson

It is from within, among yourselves
from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power
that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds in His hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed and enable you, with pure hearts and pure hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge He has committed to your keeping. — Andrew Jackson

I never favored any political party. Being a conservative or a liberal, a Republican or a Democrat, these are just labels that people use to categorize each other so that they can quickly decide whether or not they want to listen to what they have to say. Politicians are not interested in empathizing with each other. They simply try to do as little as possible in the way of serving the public while building their reputation among their peers, amassing power and wealth that is unimaginable to the common American citizen that they supposedly represent. — Aaron B. Powell

The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power. — Michel De Montaigne

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. — Carl Sagan

The American people, and the citizens of all Western nations, have the right to know about every single thing their representatives do on their behalf. After all, elected officials are merely representing those who hold the true power (the people). — James Morcan

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. — Thomas Jefferson

Weak men cannot handle power. It will either crush them, or they will use it to crush others — Jocelyn Murray