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

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.

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.

The corrupt man is nearly always rootless, deeply aware of his rootlessness.

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 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.