Graham Greene Quotes

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I found that out when I was Attorney General in Massachusetts.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.

So easily do weak men put in high positions turn villains

We have a cancer within, close to the Presidency, that is growing. It is growing daily.

Debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime; it taints the course of life in all its dreams.

Anyone in a position of power is either corrupt or assumed to be corrupt, and the assumption of corruption is as bad as the reality of it.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.

Our lie is like a cancer that's spread to every single area of our lives.

Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.

Sordid and infamous sensuality, the most dreadful evil that issued from the box of Pandora, corrupts every heart, and eradicates every virtue. Fly! wherefore dost thou linger? Fly, cast not one look behind thee; nor let even thy thought return to the accursed evil for a moment.

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,Was once thought honest.

For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.

Vanitas vanitatum has rung in the ears Of gentle and simple for thousands of years; The wail still is heard, yet its notes never scare Either simple or gentle from Vanity Fair.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.

Intellectual sodomy, which comes from the refusal to be simple about plain matters, is as gross and abundant today as sexual perversion and they are nowise different from one another.

Moral cowardice and intellectual corruption are the natural concomitants of unchallenged privilege.

There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.

We all cry out that the world is corrupt,--and I fear too justly,--but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that itis our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.