Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power.
Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.
No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.
It must be that evil communications corrupt good dispositions.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
… the most depraved wretches on earth.
Harrison was a General at the time.
The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty the brave and able man is merely a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness. No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.
Sin in a wicked man is like poison in a serpent; it is in its natural place.
It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.
He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.
What attracted me to Jimmy Bulger were the various facets of his personality and his humanity because I felt that the only way I could approach playing a character like him was to find his human side first and then map that out to see where it took the turn. He was a very complicated man.
Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell, they do not swell enough to burst.
Me? Well, I don't know, I must go to a dictionary and learn what a crook is. I've never been a crook.
Power is supposed to be so corrupt. I don't think it's so much corrupt, in the usual sense of the word, as stupid and unrealistic. The more power a person has, the further he gets from reality.
Never trust a man who says he is only a little crooked, and that the crookedness is exercised in your interest.
People make filthy things with the freedom they regained.
All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.
Corruption requires looking into someone's soul and making judgments about their intent.
The fellow has absolutely no principles."Money and gall" is all he has.
When I was a child, for a public/civil servant to be caught in corrupt practices, that individual will be a pariah. He will be a complete reject of the society; he/she could not raise his or her voice to speak in the public. So what happened between that time and now? That time when a public officer, prison or customs officer caught in corruption hides his face in shame amongst his peers, he just couldn't come out publicly. Today, when they come back, they get chieftaincy titles, they are received in grand style, cows are killed, they ride on white horses.
There's always got to be room for what you might call benign corruption. Nobody blames a man who steals food to feed his starving children, but on the other hand, somebody who picks up a badge and takes an oath to serve and protect; we do expect a certain level of essential honesty.
The protection of evil must be the most self-destructive job.
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.
Surfeit begets insolence, when prosperity comes to a bad man.