Montesquieu Quotes

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

All you got to do is look around. This country's getting worse and worse and more and more immoral, and we're rotting from within.

No one every suddenly became depraved.

When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption.

Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.

The men were all scumbags, but the whole point of the film is to show the development of that. Each guy is going in there to have a good time. By and large, these men are career men, family men, and you just see the deterioration of them.

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

The moral fiber of the American people is beset by rot and decay

… a sewer with all the depravity of the human race.

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community.

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

Tolerating organized crime promotes the cheap philosophy that everything is a racket. It promotes cynicism among adults. It contributes to the confusion of the young and to the increase of juvenile delinquency.

Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man.

At the rate America is decaying morally, we shall have to change our national symbol from an eagle to a vulture.

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.

Selfishness is the root of great evil.

How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!

Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they, and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil.

Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.

Oh, what a vileness human beauty is; corroding, corrupting everything it touches.

The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.

Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.

When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed