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Bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.

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Notes from Wikiquote

Common paraphrase: The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

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Government

More quotes by Tacitus

It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.

Great empires are not maintained by timidity.

Our magistrates discharge their duties best at the beginning; and fall off toward the end.

Every great example of punishment has in it some injustice, but the suffering individual is compensated by the public good.

A woman after having parted with her virtue will hesitate at nothing.

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tacitus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.