Alex Gibney Quotes

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.

Those in power always try to distort reality, to suit their needs and keep things safe.

There's very little different between the way the government operates in America and the way criminals do.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

My nature is that when I see abuses of power, I want to expose those abuses.

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Whoever is new to power is always harsh.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

The wrong people will do everything in their power to guarantee that the wrong political climate will continue. It seems, then, that the wrong people ensure the wrong political climate and the wrong political climate ensures the wrong people. How then to break free of this vicious circle?

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.

And when people in power can stay in power they do very little to tinker with the apparatus that put them in power.

Every generation witnesses atrocities. People in power try to fulfill prophecy.

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power.

In my case, I got hit a lot by bullies when I was a child, and so I naturally bristle against anybody who abuses power. And that seems to make me rather persistent when it comes to exposing the abuse of power.

The greater the power, the more need there is for transparency, because if the power is abused, the result can be so enormous. On the other hand, those people who do not have power, we mustn't reduce their power even more by making them yet more transparent.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

A vile and overbearing temper becomes sometimes, in one long accustomed to the exercise of power, unendurable to those who are subject to its humors.