Time & Perspective Quote by Morris West

West’s line strips away the comforting myth that moral collapse is something that happens to other people. “None of us is guaranteed” is doing quiet but forceful work: it refuses the fantasy of personal exemption, the idea that decency is a trait you possess once and for all rather than a practice you keep choosing. By pairing “failure” with “corruption,” he braids the accidental with the deliberate. You can stumble into harm through weakness or drift; you can also sell out on purpose. Either way, the point is the same: character is not a permanent state.

The phrase “witness what’s going on in the world in this moment” turns the reader into a juror. West isn’t offering abstract pessimism; he’s arguing from evidence, implying that history is a recurring courtroom where humanity keeps re-trying the same case and arriving at the same messy verdict. The doubled “human nature” lands like a grim echo. It’s not just that people make mistakes; it’s that we repeatedly rationalize them, then act surprised when systems rot, leaders fall, and ordinary citizens collaborate through apathy.

Context matters: West, a Catholic-inflected novelist obsessed with power, conscience, and institutional hypocrisy, wrote in the long shadow of world wars and Cold War brinkmanship. His intent isn’t to flatten all wrongdoing into inevitability. It’s a warning against moral smugness, the kind that lets corruption flourish because we imagine we’re immune. The subtext is bracing: vigilance is personal, not theoretical, and the world’s “moment” is always a mirror.