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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.