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

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.

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

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

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.

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.