Selected corruption quotes

1. Vote early and vote often.

2. I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.

3. Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corruptor of mankind.

4. There was open collusion between the Russian players. They agreed ahead of time to draw the games they played against each other. Every time they drew they gave each other half a point.

5. The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses.

6. All men would be tyrants if they could.

7. In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

8. Nonsense, it was all nonsense: this whole damned outfit, with its committees, its conferences, its eternal talk, talk, talk, was a great con trick; it was a mechanism to earn a few hundred men and women incredible sums of money.

9. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

10. Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.

11. Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again; finally it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony.

12. You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

13. It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

14. As for Gordon Brown - I've described him and Blair as two cheeks of the same arse.

15. Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

16. The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

17. Indolence is heaven's ally here, And energy the child of hell: The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear But brims the poisoned well.

18. I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

19. Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.

20. My mission is to lead the country out of a bad situation of corruption, depression and slavery. After I rid the country of these vices, I will then organize and supervise a general election of a genuinely democratic civilian government.

21. One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.

22. We need some honesty and sincerity instead of corrupt government in Washington.

23. The purification of politics is an iridescent dream.

24. But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated.

25. You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.

26. In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

27. The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware.

28. Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook.

29. Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

30. No, let the monarch's bags and others hold The flattering, mighty, nay, al-mighty gold.

31. Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.

32. I don't blame the people for the fact that so many movies are bad. I think there's a corrupt, perverted, lazy and sloppy attitude that's pervasive in the movie business. The whole entertainment business is kind of crumbling around us.

33. Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

34. How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.

35. There's nothing that will change someone's moral outlook quicker than cash in large sums.

36. Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

37. The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

38. Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.

39. Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.

40. All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

41. ...People don't know how utterly corrupt it [chess] is, and has been for many years...Just like when you go to watch a wrestling match, right? Saturday night wrestling. They are very good wrestlers, but anybody with half a brain knows it's almost all prearranged.

42. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Jefferson Smith

43. My view, for what it's worth, is that Kennedy was probably the most dangerous president we've had. [applause] There was a really dangerous, macho streak there, which was kind of fanatic. A lot of it is coming out now in the coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is quite revealing. It looks even worse than it looked before. And an awful lot of this willingness to drive the world to total destruction looks like a matter of protecting your macho image. Now, that kind of stuff is really dangerous. It's much better -- the best political leaders are the ones who are lazy and corrupt. It's the ones who are after power - they are the dangerous ones. So the guys who want to watch television and sleep and so on, they are no big problem. I should say the same about corruption. Corruption is a very positive sign of government. You should always be in favor of corruption. If people are interested in enriching themselves or in sex or something like that, then they are not interested in power. And the most dangerous thing is the guys that want power. That's what Kennedy was like, I think. Furthermore, corruption has a way of being exposed for quite simple reasons. When people are corrupt, they are usually robbing other rich people. Therefore they are going to block people and when corruption gets exposed it weakens power. And so that's one of the ways you can defend yourself. The same is true of the evangelicals. If we had evangelicals who were really after power, we'd be in trouble. If all they want is gold Cadillacs and sex and so on, no big problem. That's good.

44. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that when you have enough money the law is a reed that will always bend your way

45. Can you picture my specific plan?/to be the man in this wicked land,underhanded hits are planned/Scams are plotted over grams and rocks/Outlawz, mothafuckers die by the random shots

46. The coppers wanna see me burried... I ain't worried/I got a line on the D.A. cuz I'm f**king his secretary

47. 'People say I steal. Well, all politicians steal. I steal. But a lot of what I stole has spilled over in no-toll bridges, hospitals . . . and to build this university.' -- speech at Louisiana State University

48. 'It was the work of opportunists, crooks, thugs for their own self-gain and interest.'

49. What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before Prove false again? Two hundred more.

50. 'Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.'

51. And we have so much work to do in America, because all across America, there are walls ... There's a wall around Washington, D.C. The American people are, today, on the outside of that wall. And on the inside are the big corporations and the lobbyists who are working to protect a system that takes care of them. ... There is another wall that divides us. It's the moral shame of 37 million of our own people who wake up in poverty every single day This is not OK. And for eight long, long years, this wall has gotten taller And there's also a wall that's divided our image in the world. The America as the beacon of hope is behind that wall. And all the world sees now is a bully. They see Iraq, Guantanamo, secret prison and government that argues that water boarding is not torture. This is not OK. That wall has to come down for the sake of our ideals and our security. We can change this. We can change it. Yes we can. If we stand together, we can change it. ... This is not going to be easy. It's going to be the fight of our lives. But we're ready, because we know that this election is about something bigger than the tired old hateful politics of the past. This election is about taking down these walls that divide us, so that we can see what's possible -- what's possible, that one America that we can build together.

52. Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

53. This is the constitution... Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind no longer.

54. Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

55. The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.

56. Justice, n. A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

57. The government is well aware of the dangers of corruption, and I call on everybody to take measures to implement this program and fight this phenomenon.

58. When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.

59. Just keep selling them the shitty shit. We'll be fighting the next war. They'll have muskets. 'America won a war with this.' 'Yeah, a hundred years ago!' [makes aerosol can noise] 'What's that?' 'It's musket repellent.'

60. Badness is only spoiled goodness.

61. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it.

62. There ain't no ticks like poly-ticks. Bloodsuckers all.

63. This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.

64. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one.

65. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

66. The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties - differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests - they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor.

67. Seht sie klettern, diese geschwinden Affen! Sie klettern uber einander hinweg und zerren sich also in den Schlamm und die Tiefe. Hin zum Throne wollen sie Alle: ihr Wahnsinn ist es, - als ob das Gluck auf dem Throne sasse! Oft sitzt der Schlamm auf dem Thron - und oft auch der Thron auf dem Schlamme. Wahnsinnige sind sie mir Alle und kletternde Affen und Uberheisse. Ubel riecht mir ihr Gotze, das kalte Unthier: ubel riechen sie mir alle zusammen, diese Gotzendiener.

68. Und wer von uns Dichtern hatte nicht seinen Wein verfalscht? Manch giftiger Mischmasch geschah in unsern Kellern, manches Unbeschreibliche ward da getan.

69. I detrattori della corruptibilita meriterebber d'esser cangiati in statue.

70. They who are of the opinion that money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for money.

71. As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.

72. Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt.

73. I have often noticed that a bribe...has that effect - it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman.

74. I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamaties which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.

75. Let the public mind become corrupt, and all efforts to secure property, liberty, or life by the force of laws written on paper will be as vain as putting up a sign in an apple orchard to exclude canker worms.

76. The possession of power unavoidably spoils the free use of reason.

77. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on Earth.

78. Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.

79. Why did my parents send me to the schools That I with knowledge might enrich my mind? Since the desire to know first made men fools, And did corrupt the root of all mankind.

80. Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on the liberty of the human race.

81. 'Today, in the streets ordinary Fijians are talking about the truth and cleanliness, which is hard to find in this government. This is because all these years ordinary Fijians like me have been used by elite Fijians and foreigners who provide money to carry out their illegal activities.'

82. And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, 'If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it.' That is, 'After the devil himself, there is no worse folk than the pope and his followers.'

83. We've got a real irony here... We have politicians selling access to something we all own- our government. And then we have broadcasters selling access to something we all own- our airwaves. It's a terrible system.

84. He was a handsome brute in a coarse and heavy way, who, having been disgraced for corrupt practices as the first Nazi Gauleiter of Vienna, found, at thirty-five, his spiritual home as a conspiratorial dictator of the heart of Polish Jewry.

85. The principle saboteur, the man with the cheap fistful of dollars.

86. Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.

87. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement ... Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus ... thereby it becomes its enemies.

88. 'There are daily acts of violence to the general public and in all levels of government we have witnessed corrupt practices of bribery, extortion, misuse of public funds, abuse of office and all the pervasive singling out of one race. But in reality, to use it as an excuse so that a select few will benefit in wealth and position.'

89. Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.

90. Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand.

91. Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty.

92. That's the left wing of the CIA debating the right wing of the CIA.

93. The methods by which the 'Empire of Business' maintains its control over journalism are four: First, ownership of the papers; second, ownership of the owners; third, advertising subsidies; and fourth, direct bribery. By these methods there exists in America a control of news and of current comment more absolute than any monopoly in any other industry.

94. The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted - or rather tend to be corrupted--by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people.

95. The bourgeoisie are today evading taxation by bribery and through their connections; we must close all loopholes.

96. Anne and five men were put to death by due process of law because the king wished to marry again ... Henry had now so far discarded scruple that to get his way he was prepared to appear as a cuckold and a victim of witchcraft. - Sir Geoffrey Elton

97. First melted off the hope of youth Then Fancy's rainbow fast withdrew And then experience told me truth In mortal bosoms never grew 'Twas grief enough to think mankind All hollow servile insincere But worse to trust to my own mind And find the same corruption there

98. ...votes for coalition members who have always been cheats, cheats, cheats and will always be cheats, cheats, cheats and will always defend cheats, cheats, cheats..

99. By any precise definition, Washington is a city of advanced depravity. There one meets and dines with the truly great killers of the age, but only the quirkily fastidious are offended, for the killers are urbane and learned gentlemen who discuss their work with wit and charm and know which tool to use on the escargots. On New York's East Side one occasionally meets a person so palpably evil as to be fascinatingly irresistible. There is a smell of power and danger on these people, and one may be horrified, exhilarated, disgusted or mesmerized by the awful possibilities they suggest, but never simply depressed. Depression comes in the presence of depravity that makes no pretense about itself, a kind of depravity that says, 'You and I, we are base, ugly, tasteless, cruel and beastly; let's admit it and have a good wallow.' That is how Times Square speaks. And not only Times Square. Few cities in the country lack the same amenities. Pornography, prostitution, massage parlors, hard-core movies, narcotics dealers - all seem to be inescapable and permanent results of an enlightened view of liberty which has expanded the American's right to choose his own method of shaping a life. Granted such freedom, it was probably inevitable that many of us would yield to the worst instincts, and many do, and not only in New York. Most cities, however, are able to keep the evidence out of the center of town. Under a rock, as it were. In New York, a concatenation of economics, shifting real estate values and subway lines has worked to turn the rock over and put the show on display in the middle of town. What used to be called 'The Crossroads of the World' is now a sprawling testament to the dreariness which liberty can produce when it permits people with no taste whatever to enjoy the same right to depravity as the elegant classes.

100. As long as the bourgeois parliament remains a means of duping the workers, and phrases about 'democracy' are used to cover up financial swindling and every kind of bribery (the particularly 'subtle' brand of bribery the bourgeoisie practise with regard to writers, N.P.s, lawyers, and others is nowhere to be seen on so wide a scale as in the bourgeois parliament), we Communists are in duty bound to be in this very institution (which is supposed to express the people's will but actually covers up the deception of the people by the wealthy) to untiringly expose this deception, and expose each and every case of the Renners and Co.'s desertion to the capitalists, against the workers