Michael Gruber Quotes

The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong.

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.

Evil changes everybody!

When a man gets his money in bad ways, when he sees the better course and takes the worse, then the devil's in his heart, and that fixes him.

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

The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.

... a moral skunk .... [who has] debauched America ...

The most wicked thing that the dark side of human nature has ever come up with.

The perception of the right of every man to do pretty much as he pleases…. [which will produce] a general profligacy and corruption such as this country has never known.

There are some acts of justice which corrupt those who perform them.

Hypocrisy is a fearful evil, and every thing which has a tendency to produce it should be avoided.

Never will there be grief enough over the corruption of morals so extensively increasing and promoted by irreligious and obscene writings, theatrical spectacles and meretricious houses established almost everywhere; by other depraved arts and monstrous portents of every error disseminated in all directions; by the abominable impurities of all vices and crimes growing constantly and the deadly virus of unbelief and indifferentism spread far and wide; by contempt for ecclesiastical authority

Passion, prejudice, and error, are characteristics of human nature ….. Literary talents may be prostituted, and the powers of genius debased to subserve the purposes of ambition or avarice.

If you teach your boy that it is right to buy a vote, it is an easy step for him to learn to use money to bribe or corrupt officials or trustees of any class. If you teach your boy that it is right to steal votes, it is an easy step for him to believe that it is right to steal whatever he may need or greatly desire. The results of such an influence will enter every branch of society, it will reach your bank cashiers, and affect positions of trust in every department; it will ultimately enter your courts, and affect the administrations of justice.

More than Iran’s enemies need artillery, guns, and so forth, they need to spread cultural values that lead to moral corruption …. I recently read in the news that a senior official in an important American political center said “Instead of bombs, send them miniskirts”. He is right. If they arouse unrestrained mixing of men and women, and if they lead youth to behavior to which they are naturally inclined by instincts, there will no longer be any need for artillery and guns against that nation.

The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances... [Slavery]

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

I am the evil seed.

There is good and evil in each of us, and you can easily be led to the dark side.

Those who make virtue their profession are the ruin of virtue.

Callous greed grows pious very fast.

An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.

Too much virtue has a corrupting effect.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.