Pierre Stephen Robert Payne Quotes (1911-1983)

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

“A culture is not only the language and the arts of a people. It is all their history, all their hopes for the future.”

“For domination has nothing whatsoever to do with good government, and power as an end in itself destroys good government.”

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

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

“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.”

“All is forgiven to kings and popes. History grants them immunity, even a full pardon, even when they admit their crimes and glory in them.”

“It is almost a general rule that nations do not decline gradually. Instead they fall abruptly from their greatest heights.”

“Naked power has its limitations, since power is a generator of corruption and corruption in its turn tends to dilute the effectiveness of power.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Corrupt men are always liars. Lies are their instruments, their pleasure, their solace. In time they come to believe their lies, or rather to half-believe them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is no more rational to have lawyers in positions of power than it would be to have garbage collectors in positions of power. And in human terms garbage collectors would be preferable.”

“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.”

“Corruption appears to be a universal phenomenon that lays its own imperious claims on the world, and therefore it is the duty of all nations to prepare themselves against its onslaught by taking proper precautions.”

“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.”