Quotes About Corruption

It is not enough to hear a sermon, but you must eat it down, take in what it commands, and then it will purge your heart...Take the word and digest it, squeeze the juice of it into thy heart, and it will purge thee from all contrary corruption." pg.73

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated

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.

Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

When a man has cast his longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;O life, no life, but lively form of death;O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs,Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds.

For those keeping track, the only rights we have are these: to seek the survival of our individual bodies, to create more bodies like our own, and to know that everyone's body will perish through a process of corruption or mortal trauma. (This is presuming that one has been brought to term and has survived to a certain age, neither being a natural birthright. Rigorously considered, our only natural birthright is to die.)

How many honest words have suffered corruption since Chaucer's days!

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.

What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced.

It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.

Man, were he not corrupted by governments, is naturally the friend of man, and . . . human nature is not of itself vicious.

In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

Teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.

Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.

It is easy to catch a disease from another, but not to catch health. The bad will sooner corrupt the good, than the good will convert the bad.

This sin cleaves to us as a leprosy. This original pollution makes us guilty before the Lord; and even though we would never commit actual sin, it merits hell. The meditation of this would be a means to pull down our pride. -- Nay, even those who have grace have cause to walk humbly be- cause they have more corruption in them than grace: their dark side is broader than their light.