#corruption

The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination. ↗

— Richard Hofstadter

#between #character #corruption #delicate #eternal

The mask of art is the means through which corruption is spread. The mask makes vice seem beautiful, turns squalor and nastiness into glamorous thrill, seduces the onlooker into the game – and leaves him or her with the corpse on his hands. ↗

— Jennifer Birkett

#corpse #corruption #mask #seduction #squalor

Hidden away behind the closed doors of aristocratic and bourgeois privilege, concealed under those ultra-respectable masks of black frock coat and veil, the green glow of corruption flickers into sight, steadies, and spreads everywhere, fostered by Lorrain's horrified and complicitous gaze. This decadent detective is at one with the criminal he pursues, acknowledging openly that the representation of corruption is one of the most pleasurable forms that corruption can take. In this enterprise, art is the mask that both exposes and conceals culpability. ↗

— Jennifer Birkett

#corruption #crime #criminal #culpability #decadence

The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave. ↗

— Mark Twain

#censorship #christianity #evil #hubris #moral-corruption

Newt Gingrich, buddy, the people of the United States don’t like you. And the only reason the rest of the world doesn’t despise you is because they don’t know you. Thankfully you won’t have to experience that global derision, as you have reached the pinnacle of your career as a crook—I mean politician. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#corruption #creep #crook #crooked #despise

Politically, Republicans and Democrats are at opposite ends. One’s a burp and the other’s a fart.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#corruption #democrats #funny #government #humor

Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable. ↗

— Patricia Highsmith

#honesty #imagination

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin. ↗

— Jay Leno

#christmas #corruption #nativity #politics #religion

Love corrupts and absolute love corrupts absolutely. The unreasonable systems of men, that is. ↗

— Silvia Hartmann

#love #passion #love

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power. ↗

— Clive James

#ideology #politics #power #ideology