"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power"
About this Quote
Brin flips a comforting cliche into an accusation that lands closer to home. “Power corrupts” lets the rest of us off the hook: good people get tragically warped by bad systems. His revision argues the opposite vector. Power isn’t a magical toxin; it’s a spotlight and a magnet. The people most eager to stand in it are often the ones already hungry for domination, status, impunity. That subtle shift matters because it relocates the moral drama from the fall of the innocent to the selection process that puts the wrong personalities in charge.
The line works because it’s both a diagnosis and a rebuke. “It is said” invokes received wisdom, then Brin punctures it with a colder, more operational view of institutions: corruption as recruitment, not merely contamination. The second sentence sharpens the blade by redefining “sane” as those with functional priorities. If you have stable sources of meaning - craft, relationships, curiosity, community - then power looks less like a prize and more like a hazard. The craving for it becomes the tell.
Underneath is a sci-fi writer’s instinct for system design. Brin isn’t moralizing in the abstract; he’s implying that societies fail when they treat leadership as a glamour object. If power attracts the corruptible, then the real task isn’t finding saints and hoping they stay pure. It’s building incentives, transparency, and checks that make power less intoxicating to seek and harder to weaponize once obtained.
The line works because it’s both a diagnosis and a rebuke. “It is said” invokes received wisdom, then Brin punctures it with a colder, more operational view of institutions: corruption as recruitment, not merely contamination. The second sentence sharpens the blade by redefining “sane” as those with functional priorities. If you have stable sources of meaning - craft, relationships, curiosity, community - then power looks less like a prize and more like a hazard. The craving for it becomes the tell.
Underneath is a sci-fi writer’s instinct for system design. Brin isn’t moralizing in the abstract; he’s implying that societies fail when they treat leadership as a glamour object. If power attracts the corruptible, then the real task isn’t finding saints and hoping they stay pure. It’s building incentives, transparency, and checks that make power less intoxicating to seek and harder to weaponize once obtained.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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