Robert Payne Quotes

Uncorrupted man, with God's blessing, advances across the fields of the universe as though he were walking down a country lane.

A nation's wealth is too serious a matter to be left to the wealthy. The riches of a nation belong to all, to be shared among all for the general welfare.

At the heart of the mystery of corruption lies the desire of one man to impose his will on others to the largest possible extent.

The corrupt, when found out, become especially good moralists.

The game of power is played remorselessly by men who have not the slightest knowledge of, or interest in, the way ordinary people live, and the ordinary people are too terrified to protest.

Sometimes societies die and putrefy long before they are pronounced dead, and sometimes men die of corruption long before they have taken to their deathbeds.

Throughout the history of Christianity, there had been a core of belief that man was not doomed to be everlastingly corrupt.

Conquest, tyranny, treachery, and the clash of cultures bring about corrupt societies, and so does old age. Sometimes the five faces of corruption are visible at the same time.

Historically the first philosopher to enquire deeply into the nature of corruption in society was Ibn Khaldun (1322-1406), whose wandering life was largely spent in the northern littoral of Africa at a time when kingdoms and sultanates were crumbling.

The second corruption of the state is oligarchy (oligos = few), in which the military elite is narrowed down to a few ruling families of immense wealth and prestige, who now openly flaunt their wealth and possessions.

The United States is dangerously close to being a plutocracy. A third of the private wealth is owned by less than 5 percent of the population.

His worst crime was that he gave no hope to the young.

It is precisely when we help one another that we gain our victories over corruption, but the victory is assured only when we help one another with all our strength.

In the Middle Ages the king offered protection to his subjects in return for their loyalty, and the subjects were doubly protected, for the church also sheltered them. The need for shelter - for a father image that cares and will hopefully provide and give some meaning to human lives - remains as real as it was in the Middle Ages, but modern technocracy has no place for either the father or the church and provides no substitute.

Nietzsche's accomplishment is that he permits us to see corruption from the inside.