#corruption

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#consolidation #corruption #country #course #destruction

It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant. ↗

— Martin Scorsese

#corruption #crime #interesting #political #relevant

But eradicating corruption is not enough to sustain a country. ↗

— Eduard Shevardnadze

#country #enough #eradicating #sustain

Corruption has its own motivations, and one has to thoroughly study that phenomenon and eliminate the foundations that allow corruption to exist. ↗

— Eduard Shevardnadze

#corruption #eliminate #exist #foundations #motivations

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice. ↗

— Adlai E. Stevenson

#corruption #dream #justice

Only the old are innocent. That is what the Victorians understood, and the Christians. Original sin is a property of the young. The old grow beyond corruption very quickly. ↗

— Malcolm Bradbury

#christians #corruption #grow #innocent #old

What did “good government” really mean? Langlie and his brotherhood promised an end to political corruption. (There’s no evidence that Langlie ever even took a drink, much less a bribe.) The days of “honest graft” were over, at least for a while. But seen from another perspective—that of ordinary citizens without access to Langlie and Abram’s elite network—Langlie didn’t so much end corruption as legalize it. Langlie wasn’t opposed to a government organized around the interests of the greedy; he just didn’t want to have to break the law to serve them. ↗

— Jeff Sharlet

#bribery #government #legality #political-corruption #united-states

Love is both wondrous and yet full of peril. Love is a gateway through which hatred - disguised and unrecognized - can pass. ↗

— David Gemmell

#emotion #hate #love #love

Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly “free” state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#freedom #government-corruption #gun-control #gun-laws #gun-rights

Hatred is about possession. It is all-consuming, cruel, and vainglorious. When love is allowed to fester, it becomes twisted and corrupt; it settles deep in the heart...and metastasizes, sending its dark roots through the body to raze all that stands in its way. Love is chaste and pure. Love is banal....No, hatred has infinitely more possibilities. ↗

— Nenia Campbell

#hate #life #love #lovers #relationships