“Those who are not in office would do as the present officials do, or even worse, if they had the opportunity. Corrupt officials can hold office and sinecures only so long as the thoughts of the people are depraved.”

— Harold W. Percival, book Thinking and Destiny

Source: Thinking and Destiny (1946), Ch. 5, Physical Destiny, p. 138
Context: Therefore public officials in monarchies, oligarchies and democracies, are as bad as they are. They are the representatives of the people; in them the thoughts of the people have taken form. Those who are not in office would do as the present officials do, or even worse, if they had the opportunity. Corrupt officials can hold office and sinecures only so long as the thoughts of the people are depraved.

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Harold W. Percival12

Barbadian writer 1868–1953

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Companion to School Classics (1888)

“There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial.”

Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) American politician, 23rd President of the United States (in office from 1889 to 1893)

Inaugural address (1889)
Context: There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant. The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness.

“Of course it’s possible that there really ISN’T any shadow government. The whole thing could be a phony story that was fed to The Washington Post to mislead our enemies. As you recall, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently admitted that the Pentagon had set up an office-officially named "The Office of Disinformation"-that was supposed to put out false statements to the media, thus throwing our enemies off the track. For example, if we were getting ready to attack Iraq, officials of the Office of Disinformation would hold a press conference and state: "Well, we’re certainly not going to attack Iraq!"”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

The news media would report this, and Iraq would relax. France, meanwhile, would surrender.
Column for week of April 15, 2002
Columns and articles

“Those who reveal information the law makes it a crime to reveal, when doing so is the only way to demonstrate to the public that powerful officials are acting wrongfully or deceitfully.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

" The Leakers Who Exposed Gen. Flynn’s Lie Committed Serious — and Wholly Justified — Felonies https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/the-leakers-who-exposed-gen-flynns-lie-committed-serious-and-wholly-justified-felonies/," The Intecept, 14 February 2017.

“His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official's office.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

34
Variant translation: His exhaustion is that of the gladiator after the fight, his work was the whitewashing of one corner in a clerk’s office.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“Customs and immigrations officials are trained to detect the unusual. In some countries they are especially alert to CIA officers”

John Stockwell (1937) American activist

In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story, "Kinshasa"; ISBN 0393057054