The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
TacitusRead
When the State is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Corruption in the government leads to an increase in laws that often serve to control rather than protect.
Tacitus suggests that when a government is corrupt, it becomes necessary to create more laws in an attempt to maintain control and order. However, this multiplicity of laws often reflects a failure in governance and a deeper societal issue, indicating that the true problem lies not with the absence of laws, but with the integrity of those in power.
Themes
CorruptionGovernmentLawsControlSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about government ethics, one might quote Tacitus to illustrate the dangers of a corrupt administration.
More from Tacitus
All quotes βIn private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.
TacitusRead
Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
TacitusRead
Things are not to be judged good or bad merely because the public think so.
TacitusRead
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.
TacitusRead
The brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair though fear alone.
TacitusRead
Similar quotes
The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.
James MartineauRead
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
I don't believe that in the name of the holiness of the city you have to put barbed wires, machine gun nests, mine pins and everything of that, in the name of the holiness of Jerusalem.
Yitzhak RabinRead
Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.
AristotleRead
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.
Carl JungRead
There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead