A Quote by Eric Hoffer

It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.

Eric Hoffer

Quote Topics

Also Art Best Business Capitalism Corrupts Environment Everything Labor Labor Union Liberating Literature Politics Sports Totalitarianism True Unions

Quote Author

Eric Hoffer
American - Writer
July 25, 1898 - May 21, 1983

If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.

Arthur Koestler

You know, 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein said everything had changed since the atom was split, except the way we think. We have to think anew.

Studs Terkel

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

Eric Hoffer

There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts.

Bayard Rustin

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Eric Hoffer

As rust corrupts iron, so envy corrupts man.

Antisthenes

Complex regulation in place of simple-rules capitalism disrupts market processes and corrupts business incentives.

Robert L. Bradley, Jr.

What is true is that the idea of power corrupts. Power corrupts most rapidly those who believe in it, and it is they who will want it most. Obviously, our democratic system tends to give power to those who hunger for it and gives every opportunity to those who don't want power to avoid getting it. Not a very satisfactory arrangement if power corrupts those who believe in it and want it.

Gregory Bateson

Power corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Vinton Cerf

Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment. The crypto-businessman is the true revolutionary in a Communist country.

Eric Hoffer

Remember, the left corrupts everything, folks. The Democrat Party, the left corrupts every institution. They politicize it, and by virtue of that alone they corrupt it. And so at the NSA, at the Defense Intelligence Agency, at the CIA, and at the FBI, there are Obamaites, there are people that think like he.