Power & Corruption quotes for UPSC & State PCS

Clever tyrants are never punished.

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.

He who has his thumb on the purse has the power.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Power may be defined as the production of intended effects.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

First, because the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps fear of a loss of power.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.

I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking.

Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence.

Many a crown shines spotless now That yet was deeply sullied in the winning.

My political ideal is Democratic ... Force always attracts men of low morality.

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

For he that hath strength enough to protect all, wants not sufficiency to oppresse all.

When you are about to badger the weak, Then imagine yourself before a more powerful man.

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

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

One is almost driven to the cynical conclusion that men are only decent when they are powerless.

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power.

Besides, he who is feared, fears also; no one has been able to arouse terror and live in peace of mind.

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful, and then only for a short while.

History has informed us that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Translation: Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active.

No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.

As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to...

Want keeps pace with dignity. Destitute of the lawful means of supporting his rank, his dignity presents a motive for malversation, and his power furnishes the means.

Sampling out corruption is a very tough job, but I say so in all seriousness that we would be failing in our duty if we do not tackle this problem seriously and with determination.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.

We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.

Many of the actions by which men have become rich are far more harmful to the community than the obscure crimes of poor men, yet they go unpunished because they do not interfere with the existing order.

We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another.

We want the kind of world in which greedy people can do the least harm to their fellow men. That’s the kind of world in which power is widely dispersed and each of us has as many alternatives as possible.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny ; flattery to treachery ; standing armies to arbitrary government ; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

Repression can only go up to a point. When it becomes too acute, the instruments of repression, namely the army and the police, have been proved time and time again in history to have turned their guns on their masters.

You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.

Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.

Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.

Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them. These are, unfortunately, leading themes of history.

To have a good crop we must weed the field, otherwise the rice will grow badly in spite of careful ploughing and abundant manuring. To be successful in increasing production and practicing thrift, we must also weed the field, that is root out embezzlement, waste and bureaucracy. Otherwise they will harm our work.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market-capitalism, American style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by the human intelligence, undone by human nature.

I submit respectfully to the House as a general principle that our responsibility in this matter is directly proportionate to our power. Where there is great power there is great responsibility, where there is less power there is less responsibility, and where there is no power there can, I think, be no responsibility.

Faith is not in power but in truth.

The seed of revolution is repression.

Six feet of land was all that he needed.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Virtue never has been as respectable as money.

Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

Parties weaken themselves by their fear of capable men.

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

The shores of History are strewn with the wrecks of Empires.

In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest.

Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed.

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.

Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.

Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.

To get wealth and security by guile Is like one who pours water into a pot of unbaked clay.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason.

It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two plus two will make five when the Leader says so.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Once again prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear oppresses law.

Who would govern that can get along without governing? He that is fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless constrained.

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them.'

The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.

But of all motives, none is better adapted to secure influence and hold it fast than love; nothing is more foreign to that end than fear.

In circumstances where the law of force prevails, where security depends on power alone, the weakest party is naturally the most busy to place itself in a posture of defense.

There can be no freedom if one man or one group of men... is assumed... inherently perfect or perfectible. Its claim to perfection or perfectibility is a claim to absolute rule.

A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than an hundred thousand bayonets.

The real cause I consider to be the one which was formerly most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired the Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.

Promoters do not have a divine right to stay in charge regardless of how badly they mismanage an enterprise, nor do they have the right to use the banking system to recapitalize their failed ventures.

New truth is often uncomfortable, especially to the holders of power; nevertheless, amid the long record of cruelty and bigotry, it is the most important achievement of our intelligent but wayward species. '

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

By its very nature, non-violence cannot ‘seize’ power, nor can that be its goal. But non-violence can do more; it can effectively control and guide power without capturing the machinery of government. That is its beauty.

Scientists... are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control... money; many... act out of purely intellectual curiosity. ...[O]nly rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda.

It would be easy for us, if we do not learn to understand the world and appreciate the rights, privileges and duties of al other countries and peoples, to represent in our power the same danger to the world that Fascism did.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire, with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. ... Many have defended Britain against her foes. None can defend her against herself.

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity.

And it taught a lesson: State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.

Then it is that the height of unhappiness is reached, when men are not only attracted, but even pleased, by shameful things, and when there is no longer any room for a cure, now that those things which once were vices have become habits.

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

...now, the new class of landlords — they may not be landlords but practically they are — and therefore a new class of people have come up, powerful politically and socially, and it has become very difficult to implement any land reforms today, because of that.

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.

Modern democracies have been around long enough for neoliberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy—the 'independent' judiciary, the 'free' press, the parliament—and moulding them to their purpose.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

Clinton, Kennedy, they all carried out mass murder, but they didn't think that that was what they were doing - nor does Bush. You know, they were defending justice and democracy from greater evils. And in fact I think you'd find it hard to discover a mass murderer in history who didn't think that.

Washington was so popular he could have been king had he wanted that. But he had no hunger for personal power. His love was liberty, and his trust was in the people. He believed they were dependable and right-minded and he believed that a leader's responsibility is to bring out their best qualities.

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing.