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About this quote

What does it mean?
Trying to be perfectly good in a corrupt world often leads to destruction rather than success.
In plain terms
Being too good in a bad world gets you hurt.
What can you take from it?
Perfection in a corrupt world can be dangerous.

Where it applies

  • activism
  • corporate life
  • daily life

Putting it to work

  • balance ideals
  • protect self
  • adapt strategies

Questions to consider

  • Is it worth dying for integrity?
  • How do we stay good safely?

Another view

It discourages moral courage when it is needed most.

More from Sir Walter Raleigh

  1. All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty…

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  2. Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunit…

    Permalink to quote #31
  3. It is the nature of men, having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting th…

    Permalink to quote #28

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