Quotes on Corruption
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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"
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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958. Corruption
"There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed."
Johnson: Rambler #86 (January 12, 1751)
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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)
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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
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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