Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.
If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.
Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.
Too much virtue can be criminal.
There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.
Corruption is just another form of tyranny.
So there's always been this clash between what is the public good - that which belongs to all of us in common - and what can be exploited for a private interest.
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.
Good government is the outcome of private virtue.