I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them.

One camp accepts the Court's limits on contributions but urges the reinstatement of spending caps - even if this requires a constitutional amendment subjecting political speech, if not pornography, to government regulation.

Given the difficulty of resisting such temptations over the longer run, a proper concern for the welfare of congressional souls may well be the ultimate argument in favor of term limitations.

In rendering its decision in our case, the Supreme Court equated money with speech because these days it takes the first to make yourself heard.

The Court made an exception, however, in the case of candidates contributing to their own campaigns because of the rather reasonable presumption that a candidate is incapable of corrupting himself.

If enough people openly engage in conduct once considered reprehensible, we rewrite the rule book and assume that God, as a good democrat, will go along.

The kind of corruption the media talk about, the kind the Supreme Court was concerned about, involves the putative sale of votes in exchange for campaign contributions.

Moreover, we are showing a dismaying tendency to recast God in Man's image.

Under the circumstances, may I suggest another means of encouraging probity in elective office. I refer to term limitations, which can serve ends beyond that of saving congressional souls.

Once it becomes impossible for members of Congress to make a career of legislative service, the temptation to bend a vote for whatever reason may yield to the better angels of their nature.

As a consequence, the Court ruled that the limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment, but it accepted the $1,000 limit on individual contributions on the ground that the need to avoid the appearance of corruption justified this limited constraint on speech.

In the last analysis, of course, an oath will encourage fidelity in office only to the degree that officeholders continue to believe that they cannot escape ultimate accountability for a breach of faith.

I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.

This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.

They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies.

Unfortunately, the media, which are not at all reluctant to act in their own self-interest, have succeeded in equating reform in the public mind with further restrictions on just about everyone else's freedom of political speech.

I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them.

What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.

What distinguishes the campaign finance issue from just about every other one being debated these days is that the two sides do not divide along conventional liberal/ conservative lines.

It would seem, therefore, that this constitutional safeguard may no longer serve its original purpose, especially when, as we learned last year, some acts of perjury may now be acceptable - in this world, at least, if not the next.

Unfortunately, in today's world we have to be reminded that the power of an oath derives from the fact that in it we ask God to bear witness to the promises we make with the implicit expectation that He will hold us accountable for the manner in which we honor them.

Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.

About the only time losing is more fun than winning is when you're fighting temptation.

Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you.

It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

By and large the United States has been able to resist the temptation to close its doors to the world.

Why resist temptation? There will always be more.

Every life is march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colors that are but skin-deep.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

You oughtn't to yield to temptation. Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

Let's remember the children who come from broken homes, surrounded by crime, drugs, temptation, their peers having babies out of wedlock, but who still manage to get a good education despite the many obstacles they face every day.

Knowledge of God's Word is a bulwark against deception, temptation, accusation, even persecution.

The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.

Some are wrong because they are not strong enough to fight temptation and some some are wrong because they do not know.

That's what I loved about Temptation Island. I don't even know why they did it.

Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise.

Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.

Those who believe in the importance of serving others should lead the way by fighting against the temptation we all have, and maybe especially as we age, to close in upon ourselves.

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?