Corruption Quotes

For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.

These cardinals trifle with me; I abhor; This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred.

Tyranny knows no restraint of appetite.

The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place.

I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures.

A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.

It is awful hard to get people interested in corruption unless they can get some of it.

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

What, shall one of us, That struck for the foremost man of all this world But for supporting robbers--shall we now Contaminate our fingers with base bribes, And sell the mighty space of our large honors For so much trash as may be grasped thus?

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

This country has been strip-mined by rich and powerful interests. If you dont like what they're doing, don't just sit there. Vote them out.

The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.

My morals went when the president got oral.

Anyhow, I don't think Don King's a very good man. But then again, I doubt that a good man *could* succeed in his business. I'm sure boxing was a dirty sport before he came around. He may have just made it moreso. So that's about all I've got to say about him.

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.

Sir, are you trying to offer me a bribe? How much

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.

Life is fountain of joy; but where the rabble also gather to drink, all wells are poisoned.

There is no praise in being upright, where no one can, or tries to corrupt you.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men.

The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury.

The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition

The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them - that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans.

A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.

The party belongs to the millions of the rank and file. It does not belong to the handful of politicians who have assumed fraudulently to upset the will of the rank and file. The action of these men is in no sense "regular," as they claim it to be.... theft and dishonesty cannot give and never shall give a title to regularity.

For in the fatness of these pursy timesVirtue itself of vice must pardon beg.

In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies

When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.

When power corrupts, poetry cleanses

The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,Was once thought honest.

Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: The Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business, and big labor.

Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

Innocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.

Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!

What we have now is democracy without citizens. No one is on the public's side. All the buyers are on the corporations' side. And the bureaucrats in the Administration don't think the government belongs to the people.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with 'what can I give' spirit.

Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man.

No people ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.

What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.

I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.

Politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked

In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.

You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

Glory grows guilty of detested crimes.