#Corruption Quotes

“Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself are much condemned to have an itching palm.”

“Corruption wins not more than honesty.”

“They do not abuse the king that flatter him. For flattery is the bellows blows up sin; The thing the which is flattered, but a spark To which that blast gives heat and stronger glowing.”

“Nor aught so good but strained from that fair use,Revolts from true birth stumbling on abuse.”

“Th abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”

“Gold--what can it not do, and undo?”

“The summer's flow'r is to the summer sweet,Though to itself it only live and die'But if that flow'r with base infection meet,The basest weed outbraves his dignity:For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

“Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.”

“The fittest time to corrupt a man's wife is when she's fallen out with her husband.”

“No man's pie is freedFrom his ambitious finger.”

“In limited professions there's boundless theft.”

“ROMEO There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murders in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial and not poison, go with me To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee.”

“The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.”

“Glory grows guilty of detested crimes.”

“Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition”

“Thieves for their robbery have authority When judges steal themselves.”

“Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds.”

“The world is grown so bad, That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.”

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

“They that touch pitch will be defiled.”

“The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.”

“The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. ... In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections.”

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

“Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.”

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

“Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school.”

“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?”

“The caterpillars of the commonwealth,Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.”

“It is meant that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm that cannot be seduced.”

“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre & men of straw. They will have sweet tongues & silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power & India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air & water would be taxed in India.”

“The President proclaims war, and those Senators who dissent are not those who know better, but those who can afford to...Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.”

“Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.”

“The insolence of office.”

“The whole constitution of property on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading.”

“Care for us! True, indeed! They ne'er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us.”

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

“Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politics ....?”

“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world.”

“The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.”

“Vice repeated is like the wandering wind, blows dust in others' eyes to spread itself.”

“After a time, civil servants tend to become no longer servants and no longer civil.”

“No other depositories of power [but the people themselves] have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge.”

“Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.”

“But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Bobinson, and their parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing.”

“Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.”

“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

“Now these fellows in Washington wouldn't be so serious and particular if they only had to vote on what they thought was good for the majority of the people in the U.S. That would be a cinch. But what makes it hard for them is every time a bill comes up they have things to decide that have nothing to do with the merit of the bill. The principal thing is of course: What will this do for me personally back home?”

“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”

“Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.”