#corrupt

It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption. ↗

— H. Rider Haggard

#amorality #corruption #cynicism #growing-old #hopelessness

The mask of art is the means through which corruption is spread. The mask makes vice seem beautiful, turns squalor and nastiness into glamorous thrill, seduces the onlooker into the game – and leaves him or her with the corpse on his hands. ↗

— Jennifer Birkett

#corpse #corruption #mask #seduction #squalor

Hidden away behind the closed doors of aristocratic and bourgeois privilege, concealed under those ultra-respectable masks of black frock coat and veil, the green glow of corruption flickers into sight, steadies, and spreads everywhere, fostered by Lorrain's horrified and complicitous gaze. This decadent detective is at one with the criminal he pursues, acknowledging openly that the representation of corruption is one of the most pleasurable forms that corruption can take. In this enterprise, art is the mask that both exposes and conceals culpability. ↗

— Jennifer Birkett

#corruption #crime #criminal #culpability #decadence

If there is no case to take care of, then you will take care to create a case to take care of. Otherwise your system becomes useless. ↗

— Oliver Kemper

#case #corruption-and-attitude #security #attitude

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#corruption #court-system #courts #ethical-behaviour #ethics

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#business

This world is too comfort to be changed. This world is too corrupt to be conserved. ↗

— Toba Beta

#comfort #conserved #corrupt #change

Look at Mexico. We need to make that government better and end the corruption. If people have a better life in their country, they won't come over here. ↗

— Tony Garza

#better life #come #corruption #country #end

Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we have succeeded only in humiliating honest people and provided a cover of darkness and complexity for the bad people. There is a scandal here, but it's not the result of venal bureaucrats. (1994) p. 99 ↗

— Philip K. Howard

#bureaucrats #conservative #corruption #government #plato

At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers? ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#capitalism #corporations #dam #economics #environmental-degradation