Other related topics at:
Virtue and Vice
9. Corruption; Romans
"I know not why any one but a school-boy in his declamation
should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only
by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others,
as soon as they grew 
rich, grew corrupt; and in their
corruption
sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.
[...] A people, who while they were poor robbed mankind; and as
soon as they became rich, robbed one another."
Johnson: Review of Thomas Blackwell's "Memoirs of the Court of
Augustus"
Link
31. Authority; Corruption;
Monarchy
"Sir, you are to consider, that in our constitution, according to
its true principles, the King is the head, he is supreme: he is
above everything, and there is no power by which he can be
tried. Therefore, it is, Sir, that we hold the King can do no
wrong; that whatever may happen to be wrong in government may
not be above our reach, by being ascribed to Majesty. Redress is
always to be had against oppression, by punishing the immediate
agents. The King, though he should command, cannot force a Judge
to condemn a man unjustly; therefore it is the Judge whom we
prosecute and punish. Political institutions are formed upon the
consideration of what will frequently tend to the good of the
whole, although now and then exceptions may occur. Thus it is
better in general that a nation should have a supreme legislative
power, although it may at times be abused. And then, Sir, there
is this consideration, that if the abuse be numerous, Nature
will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a
corrupt political system."
Boswell: Life
Link
60. Corruption
"Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, while he was chill,
was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in
poison."
Boswell: Life
Link
150. Corruption; Solitude
"Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to
virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual
as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety, will be
likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for
the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a
vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief.
Remember that the solitary mind is certainly luxurious, probably
superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of
employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in
foul air."
Piozzi: Anecdotes
Link
341. Avarice; Corruption
But scarce observed, the knowing and the bold
Fall in the general massacre of gold;
Wide-wasting pest! that rages unconfined,
And crowds with crimes the records of mankind;
For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws,
For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws;
Wealth heaped on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys,
The dangers gather as the treasures rise.
Johnson: The Vanity Of Human Wishes
Link
514. Corruption; Temptation
"Our senses, our appetites, and our passions are our lawful and
faithful guides in most things that relate solely to this life;
and, therefore, by the hourly necessity of consulting them we
gradually sink into an implicit submission, and habitual
confidence. Every act of compliance with their motions
facilitates a second compliance, every new step towards depravity
is made with less reluctance than the former, and thus the
descent to life merely sensual is accelerated."
Johnson: Rambler #7 (April 10, 1750)
Link
517. Corruption
"We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their
full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness,
endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-
deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and
reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time
accommodated to darkness."
Johnson: Rambler #8 (April 14, 1750)
Link
589. Contemplation; Corruption
"A man cannot spend all this life in frolic: age, or disease, or
solitude, will bring some hours of serious consideration, and it
will then afford no comfort to think, that he has extended the
dominion of vice, that he has loaded himself with the crimes of
others, and can never know the extent of his own wickedness, or
make reparation for the mischief that he has caused. There is
not, perhaps, in all the stores of ideal anguish, a thought more
painful than the consciousness of having propagated corruption by
vitiating principles, of having not only drawn others from the
path of virtue, but blocked up the way by which they should
return, of having blinded them to every beauty but the paint of
pleasure, and deafened them to every call but the alluring voice
of the sirens of destruction."
Johnson: Rambler #31 (June 30, 1750)
Link
646. Corruption; Economics
"Whatever is found to gratify the publick, will be multiplied by
the emulation of venders beyond necessity or use. This plenty,
indeed, produces cheapness, but cheapness always ends in
negligence and depravation."
Johnson: Idler #7 (May 27, 1758)
Link
649. Corruption; Generation Gap; Old
Age
"Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world,
of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He
recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and
celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his
youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be
expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and
thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence."
Johnson: Rambler #50 (September 8, 1750)
Link
670. Corruption; Economy; Virtue
"Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of
Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. He that is extravagant
will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence,
and invite corruption; it will almost always produce a passive
compliance with the wickedness of others; and there are few who
do not learn by degrees to practise those crimes which they cease
to censure."
Johnson: Rambler #57 (October 2, 1750)
Link
708. Corruption; Salvation; Temptation;
Virtue
"Remember, my son, that human life is the journey of a day. We
rise in the morning of youth, full of vigour and full of
expectation; we set forward with spirit and hope, with gaiety
and with diligence, and travel on a while in the straight road of
piety towards the mansions of rest. In a short time we remit our
fervour, and endeavour to find some mitigation of our duty, and
some more easy means of obtaining the same end. We then relax
our vigour, and resolve no longer to be terrified with crimes at
a distance, but rely upon our own constancy, and venture to
approach what we resolve to never touch. We thus enter the
bowers of ease, and repose in the shades of security. Here the
heart softens and vigilance subsides; we are then willing to
inquire whether another advance cannot be made, and whether we
may not, at last, turn our eyes upon the garden of pleasure. We
approach them with scruple and hesitation; we enter them, but
enter timorous and trembling, and always hope to pass through
them without losing the road of virtue, which we, for a while,
keep in our sight, and to which we propose to return. But
temptation succeeds temptation, and one compliance prepares us
for another; we, in time, lose the happiness of innocence, and
solace our disquiet with sensual gratifications. By degrees we
let fall the remembrance of our original intention, and quit the
only adequate object of rational desire. We entangle ourselves
in business, immerge ourselves in luxury, and rove through the
labyrinths of inconstancy, till the darkness of old age begins to
invade us, and disease and anxiety obstruct our way. We then
look back upon our lives with horror, with sorrow, with
repentance; and wish, but too often vainly wish, that we had not
forsaken the ways of virtue. Happy are they, my son, who shall
learn from thy example not to despair, but shall remember, that
though the day is past, and their strength is wasted, there yet
remains one effort to be made; that reformation is never
hopeless, nor sincere endeavours ever unassisted; that the
wanderer may at length return after all his errours, and that he
who implores strength and courage from above shall find danger
and difficulty give way before him. Go now, my son, to thy
repose, commit thyself to the care of Omnipotence, and when the
morning calls again to toil, begin anew thy journey and thy
life."
Johnson: Rambler #65 (October 30, 1750) [words said by a
fictional hermit]
Link
708a. Corruption; Temptation
"Temptation succeeds temptation, and one compliance prepares us
for another; we, in time, lose the happiness of innocence, and
solace our disquiet with sensual gratifications."
Johnson: Rambler #65 (October 30, 1750) [words said by a
fictional hermit]
Link
708b. Corruption; Temptation
"We entangle ourselves in business, immerge ourselves in luxury,
and rove through the labyrinths of inconstancy, till the darkness
of old age begins to invade us, and disease and anxiety obstruct
our way. We then look back upon our lives with horror, with
sorrow, with repentance; and wish, but too often vainly wish,
that we had not forsaken the ways of virtue."
Johnson: Rambler #65 (October 30, 1750) [words said by a
fictional hermit]
Link
751. Corruption
"Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately
pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading
the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the
depravity. --Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such
abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with
grief and indignation."
Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)
Link
752. Corruption; Politics
"There are minds which easily sink into submission, that look on
grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no defect
where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches."
Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)
Link
786. Corruption; Influence
"Every one should consider himself as intrusted not only with his
own conduct, but with that of others; and as accountable, not
only for the duties which he neglects, or the crimes that he
commits, but for that negligence and irregularity which he may
encourage or inculcate. Every man, in whatever station, has, or
endeavours to have his followers, admirers, and imitators, and
has therefore the influence of his example to watch with
care."
Johnson: Rambler #70 (November 17, 1750)
Link
797. Corruption; Life; Moral
Instruction
"Those who exalt themselves into the chair of instruction,
without inquiring whether any will submit to their authority,
have not sufficiently considered how much of human life passes in
little incidents, cursory conversation, slight business, and
casual amusements; and therefore they have endeavoured only to
inculcate the more awful virtues, without condescending to regard
those petty qualities which grow important only by their
frequency, and which, though they produce no single acts of
heroism, nor astonish us by any great events, yet are every
moment exerting their influence upon us, and make the draught of
life sweet or bitter by imperceptible instillations. They
operate unseen and unregarded, as change of air makes us sick or
healthy, though we breathe it without attention, and only know
the particles that impregnate it by their salutary or malignant
effects."
Johnson: Rambler #72 (November 24, 1750)
Link
893. Corruption; Suspicion
"Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness: he
that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that
becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt. It is too common for
us to learn the frauds by which ourselves have suffered; men who
are once persuaded that deceit will be employed against them,
sometimes think the same arts justified by the necessity of
defense. Even they whose virtue is too well established to give
way to example, or be shaken by sophistry, must yet feel their
love of mankind diminished with their esteem, and grow less
zealous for the happiness of those by whom they imagine their own
happiness endangered."
Johnson: Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)
Link
958. Corruption
"There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new
prejudices to be opposed."
Johnson: Rambler #86 (January 12, 1751)
Link
959. Corruption; Ignorance
"False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering
upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of
his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a
fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total
darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre."
Johnson: Rambler #86 (January 12, 1751)
Link
1,149. Corruption; Society;
Virtue
"No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous."
Johnson: An Introduction To The Political State of Great
Britain
Link
1,171. Corruption; Vanity
"As no man willingly quits opinions favourable to himself, they
who have once been justly celebrated imagine that they still
have the same pretensions to regard, and seldom perceive the
diminution of their character while there is still time to
recover it."
Johnson: Rambler #127 (June 4, 1751)
Link
1,273. Corruption
"No corruption is great but by long negligence, which can
scarcely prevail in a mind regularly and frequently awakened by
periodical remorse."
Johnson: Rambler #155 (September 10, 1751)
Link
1,361. Corruption
"The powers of the mind, when they are unbound and expanded by
the sunshine of felicity, more frequently luxuriate into
follies than blossom into goodness."
Johnson: Rambler #172 (November 9, 1751)
Link
1,362. Corruption
"The greater part of mankind are corrupt in every condition, and
differ in high and in low stations only as they have more or
fewer opportunities of gratifying their desires, or as they are
more or less restrained by human censures."
Johnson: Rambler #172 (November 9, 1751)
Link
1,375. Corruption
"The depravity of mankind is so easily discoverable that nothing
but the desert or the cell can exclude it from notice. The
knowledge of crimes intrudes uncalled and undesired. They whom
their abstraction from common occurrences hinders from seeing
iniquity will quickly have their attention awakened by feeling
it. Even he who ventures not into the world may learn its
corruption in his closet."
Johnson: Rambler #175 (November 19, 1751)
Link
1,397. Corruption; Health
"All assemblies of jollity, all places of public entertainment
exhibit examples of strength wasting in riot, and beauty
withering in irregularity; nor is it easy to enter a house in
which part of the family is not groaning in repentance of past
intemperance, and part admitting disease by negligence, or
soliciting it by luxury."
Johnson: Rambler #178 (November 30, 1751)
Link
1,462. Corruption
"He that suffers the slightest breach in his morality can seldom
tell what shall enter it, or how wide it shall be made; when a
passage is open, the influx of corruption is every moment wearing
down opposition, and by slow degrees deluges the heart."
Johnson: Rambler #201 (February 18, 1752)
Link
1,663. Corruption; Reform
"Mankind are universally corrupt, but corrupt in different
degrees; as they are universally ignorant, yet with greater or
lesser irradiations of knowledge. How has knowledge or virtue
been increased and preserved in one place beyond another, but by
diligent inculcation and rational inforcement?"
Johnson: Adventurer #137 (February 26, 1754)
Link
1,728. Corruption; Desires
"The doctrine of self-denial is not weakened in itself by the
errors of those who misinterpret or misapply it; the encroachment
of the appetites upon the understanding is hourly perceived; and
the state of those whom sensuality has enslaved, is known to be
in the highest degree despicable and wretched."
Johnson: Idler #52 (April 14, 1759)
Link
1,729. Complacency; Corruption
"Nothing is more fatal to happiness or virtue, than that
confidence which flatters us with an opinion of our own strength,
and, by assuring us of the power of retreat, precipitates us into
hazard."
Johnson: Idler #52 (April 14, 1759)
Link
1,730. Corruption
"To every man there is a point fixed, beyond which if he passes,
he will not easily return."
Johnson: Idler #52 (April 14, 1759)
Link
1,829. Corruption; Reason;
Temptation
"Reason has no authority over us, but by its power to warn us
against evil."
Johnson: Idler #89 (December 29, 1759)
Link
