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

Robert Payne

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Robert Payne
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Gradually
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More quotes by Robert Payne

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The corrupt man is nearly always rootless, deeply aware of his rootlessness.
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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.
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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.
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Nietzsche's accomplishment is that he permits us to see corruption from the inside.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Naked power has its limitations, since power is a generator of corruption and corruption in its turn tends to dilute the effectiveness of power.
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A culture is not only the language and the arts of a people. It is all their history, all their hopes for the future.
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The corrupt, when found out, become especially good moralists.
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Long before the empire had reached its greatest extent, the Romans were bored by it.
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For domination has nothing whatsoever to do with good government, and power as an end in itself destroys good government.
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Uncorrupted man, with God's blessing, advances across the fields of the universe as though he were walking down a country lane.
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Throughout the history of Christianity, there had been a core of belief that man was not doomed to be everlastingly corrupt.
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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.
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