Top 100 Quotes About Corrupts
#1. Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
Francis Bacon
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. He showed his daughter how to use cushions to vary his position and relieve the monotony of pressure that corrupts the flesh, but he made her leave the room for all those tasks which would normally fall to the lot of a woman, and which show the greatest love.
Louis De Bernieres
#5. I don't know if power seduces less or more. I think power is a constant evolving mechanism that, since the dawn of time, on one level corrupts and on another level does not. But I think, no matter what, mutates.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#7. By deceiving Drona, Yudhishthira corrupts his teacher's relationship with the world. So do we every time we lie - we corrupt the 'other' in the same way.
Gurcharan Das
#8. A thunderous boo is one thousand times stronger, nobler, and more powerful than a standing ovation. Admiration corrupts.
Nelson Rodrigues
#9. It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.
Eric Hoffer
#10. If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.
Arthur Koestler
#11. Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important.
Fred Brooks
#13. Bad company corrupts good character.
Menander
#14. Knowledge is power; power corrupts. Corruption brings shame and ruin. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is perhaps preferable to a life lived in shame.
Lauren Kate
#15. Nothing corrupts like happiness. It makes us think that since we share this moment, we can also share the past.
Peter Hoeg
#16. It is true that power corrupts. The hope at the polling stations and the actions of the elected representatives, unfortunately, often turn to be opposite. The power of ballot turns into the power of wallet. Some law-makers become law-breakers.
Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj
#17. The Republican Party either corrupts its liberals or it expels them.
Harry S. Truman
#18. 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
#19. Glorify a lie, legalize a lie, arm and equip a lie, consecrate a lie with solemn forms and awful penalties, and after all it is nothing but a lie. It rots a land and corrupts a people like any other lie, and by and by the white light of God's truth shines clear through it, and shows it to be a lie.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#20. I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.
Elia Kazan
#22. The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess. It bankrupts families and townships. It disables whole classes of decent, normal citizens. It ruins the air we breathe. It corrupts and deadens our spirit.
James Howard Kunstler
#24. Love corrupts and absolute love corrupts absolutely. The unreasonable systems of men, that is.
Silvia Hartmann
#25. It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#26. Too much power is never a good thing. It corrupts even the strongest.
Lara Adrian
#27. 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
#28. Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
Will Durant
#29. Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.
Charles Koch
#30. When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress, written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face. Who could withstand the light? What viewer could believe in the war, the system, the countless lies about American freedom, looking into these mugs shots of the bought and sold?
Thomas Pynchon
#31. Ed, knows power corrupts, they'll have experienced that first-hand. They'll see how I'd be tempted to use my own power for personal reasons. They may not approve of that, but they'll buy
Margaret Atwood
#32. The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior.
H.G.Wells
#33. The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.
Immanuel Kant
#34. There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts.
Jiang Qing
#35. No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself.
John Connolly
#36. 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
#39. Too many terms corrupts politicians so they only want to be reelected.
Alice Paul
#40. 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
#41. Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
Eric Hoffer
#42. Speech doesn't corrupt. Money corrupts, and money isn't speech.
Russ Feingold
#43. Trade it may help, society extend,
But lures the Pirate, ant corrupts the friend:
It raises armies in a nation's aid,
But bribes a senate, and the land's betray'd.
Alexander Pope
#44. The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
Chinua Achebe
#45. 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
#46. As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.
Germaine Greer
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. Do not be deceived: bad company corrupts good morals.
Anonymous
#50. Complex regulation in place of simple-rules capitalism disrupts market processes and corrupts business incentives.
Robert L. Bradley Jr.
#51. Money is the worst currency that ever grew among mankind. This sacks cities, this drives men from their homes, this teaches and corrupts the worthiest minds to turn base deeds.
Sophocles
#52. The old order changes, giving place to the new... least on good custom should corrupts the world.
Alfred Tennyson
#53. Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.
Benjamin Banneker
#54. Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.
Louis L'Amour
#55. Time pressure gradually corrupts an engineer's standard of quality and perfection. It has a detrimental effect on people as well as products
Niklaus Wirth
#56. Luxury ... corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.
Henri Rousseau
#57. Association with other people corrupts our character; especially when we have none.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#58. All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.
Edgar Friedenberg
#59. Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
Edward Abbey
#61. 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,
#62. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer
#63. 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
#64. PACs corrupt the system. They handle vast amounts of money and the money corrupts.
Paul Ryan
#65. War is a kind of superstition, the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#66. 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
#67. Success corrupts character when a person loses the spirit of thankfulness.
Orrin Woodward
#70. Power corrupts the best of men.
Power destroys the worst of men.
Corrupt nations end up in turmoil.
Corrupt rulers end up in Hell.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#71. 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
#72. I no longer give Power Point presentations, because I've come to believe that power corrupts, and Power Point corrupts absolutely.
Vinton Cerf
#73. 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
#74. To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.
Michel De Montaigne
#75. Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in
the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
Irvin D. Yalom
#76. A small amount of power corrupts a small man absolutely. A little knowledge is dangerous to a little man. To a great man only great knowledge is dangerous.
Leonard J. V. Compagno
#78. As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct.
Augustine Of Hippo
#79. 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
#80. If success corrupts, I'm probably pretty corrupted by now.
Bill Gates
#81. Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul.
Leo Tolstoy
#82. That is how war corrupts us. It plays on our pride in our own free will.
John Fowles
#83. You can take power from others; you can steal it. It is not a very high-grade power. It will give you a certain amount of access to a better life; but it corrupts the individual.
Frederick Lenz
#84. Success Corrupts and Limits Potential as Soon as You Start to Think You Could Do It Alone.
Scott Belsky
#85. All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely.
Lawrence Durrell
#86. With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.
Clint Eastwood
#87. 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
#88. I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secured on the back of massive parliamentary majorities, which don't reflect the balance of political opinion in the country - can corrupt absolutely.
Charles Kennedy
#90. Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn't achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing.
Cherie Blair
#91. We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
Robert Caro
#92. The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.
Joshua Reynolds
#93. Capitalism attacks and destroys all the finer sentiments of the human heart; it ruthlessly sweeps away old traditions and ideas opposed to its progress, and it exploits and corrupts those things once held sacred.
Daniel De Leon
#95. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
from Steelheart (Reckoners #1)
by Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson
#96. They've worked the absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely truth since the beginning of time. They foment destruction and chaos. It puts them in their happy place.
Nina Bangs
#97. There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others.
I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.
Jorge Luis Borges
#98. Sordid and infamous sensuality, the most dreadful evil that issued from the box of Pandora, corrupts every heart, and eradicates every virtue. Fly! wherefore dost thou linger? Fly, cast not one look behind thee; nor let even thy thought return to the accursed evil for a moment.
Francois Fenelon
#99. In science, ideology tends to corrupt; absolute ideology, [corrupts] absolutely. - Robert Nisbet
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#100. It's 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. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
David Brin
