The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
TacitusRead
A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how a small group's immoral actions can be supported by the complacency of society.
Tacitus speaks to the moral failings of society, illustrating how a shocking crime can arise not just from the actions of a few bad actors but also from the silent concurrence of many others. It suggests that complicity can manifest not only through direct involvement but also through inaction or passive acceptance, urging society to reflect on its role in the perpetuation of wrongdoing.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion or presentation on social responsibility and ethics.
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
In private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.
Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
Things are not to be judged good or bad merely because the public think so.
So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.
The brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair though fear alone.
We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.
Meditate upon the Om that is in the heart.
Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.
Mostly what you lose with time, in memory, is the specificity of things, their exact sequence. It all runs together, becomes a watery soup. Portmanteau days, imploded years. Like a bad actor, memory always goes for effect, abjuring motivation, consistency, good sense.
True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is "found to praise and honour and glory.
My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.
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