The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990).
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you super-add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Lord Acton, in a letter to Mandell Creighton, (5 April 1887), published in Historical Essays and Studies (1907).
The corrupt fear us · the honest support us · the heroic join us.
Anonymously said.