247 Corruption Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The purification of politics is an iridescent dream.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all- by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians- be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.

But most, thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot's curse Blasts the new born Infant's tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely.

The system of banking we have both equally and 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.

Here was a man who could not spell, and did not care to read - who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but was sordid and soil; and yet he had rank, and honors, and power, somehow: and was dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state.

To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids - all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

Corruption: 'The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places.'

All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

I met Murder on the way - He had a mask like Castlereagh - Very smooth he looked, yet grim; Seven blood-hounds followed him.

The soul is subject to dollars.

Why, when murder now is stalking in your streets, when dens of infamy are so thick within your city that competition has forced down the price of prostitution to the level of the wages of your starving shirt makers; when robbers sit in State and national Senate and House, when the boasted 'bulwark of our liberties,' the elective franchise, has become a U. S. dice-box, wherewith great gamblers play away your liberties; when debauchees of the worst type hold all your public offices and dine off the food of fools who support them, why, then, sits Moses Harman there within his prison cell? If he is so great a criminal, why is he not with the rest of the spawn of crime, dining at Delmonico's or enjoying a trip to Europe? If he is so bad a man, why in the name of wonder did he ever get in the penitentiary? ... He looked, this obscenist looked with clear eyes into this ill-got thing you call morality, sealed with the seal of marriage, and saw in it the consummation of immorality, impurity, and injustice. He beheld every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passion; who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation, not at her desire; who can control no property, not even her own body, without his consent, and from whose straining arms the children she bears may be torn at his pleasure, or willed away while they are yet unborn. It is said the English language has a sweeter word than any other, - home. But Moses Harman looked beneath the word and saw the fact, - a prison more horrible than that where he is sitting now, whose corridors radiate over all the earth, and with so many cells, that none may count them.

As to the power which money gives, it is that of brute force, it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet, and of the bribed press, tongue and pen.

I stuffed their mouths with gold.

Who weeps for these, weeps for corruption!

Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice - almighty gold.

There no doubt exist natural laws, but once this fine reason of ours was corrupted, it corrupted everything.

Sport is born clean and it would stay that way if it was the athletes who ran it for the pleasure of taking part, but then the fans and the media intervene and finish up by corrupting it with the pressure that they exercise.

Fear's a powerful thing It'll turn your heart black you can trust It'll take your God filled soul Fill it with devils and dust.

A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.

Black Bush: Oil? Oil? Who said anything about oil, Bitch you cooking? (tosses the water) RUN!!

'I didn't care if the fucking Capitol tower fell on its side and rolled into the ocean with everyone in it. I have never seen such a display of hateful, selfish, self-centered fucks in my life.'

They say that the AntiChrist will be born of a monk and a nun. If so, there must already be thousands of AntiChrists.

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates - the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.

What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.

Over the next three years, Krebiozin was destroyed. But to destroy Krebiozin you first had to destroy Andrew Ivy. How do you destroy the most influential, respected scientist in the United States? You get friends in the media. You get rid of his academic affiliations. You start a whisper campaign. And next thing you know, nobody wants to know the man. It took about five years, then they brought him up on a trial of fraud. It was at that point the longest medical trial in the United States' history. At the end of it, the jury found Ivy and the Durovic brothers innocent. Not only that, but they found the FDA irresponsible. And the jury actually made a statement, which is rare, about the contempt that the FDA had for honesty in what it did at trial.

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

And Edwin Meese alone has been investigated by three separate Special Prosecutors, and there's a fourth one waiting for him in Washington right now. Three separate Special Prosecutors have had to look into the activities of the Attorney General. And the Attorney General is the nation's leading law enforcement officer!

In the city built upon slime and loam, They cry in their Parliament, 'Who goes home?' And there comes no answer in arch or dome, For none in the city of graves goes home. Yet these shall perish and understand, For God has pity on this great land.

Dr. Martin, I am a man marked by death. We shall not be able to go on seeing each other for long and in your own interests I suggest you do not come here any more. Whatever happens, mark what I say: From now on Germany is in the hands of an Austrian who is a congenital liar, a former officer who is a pervert, and a clubfoot. And I tell you the last is the worst of them all. This is Satan in human form.

He is so corrupt that he would willingly pay for the pleasure of selling himself.

Instead of the poems I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blackness and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before - the unwhisperable secret of secrets - The fact that this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life.

My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.

The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me... The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport - we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be - the end of the world as we knew it.

Today, the Panzer-like Bush machine controls all three branches of our federal government, the first time that has happened since Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. And that makes it just about impossible to mount any kind of Congressional investigation of a firmly-entrenched president like George Bush. The time has come to get deeply into football. It is the only thing we have left that ain't fixed.

Sometimes an ill favored bitch gnaws a good chord.

They could care less about the public. The public comes in third. Number one is keeping their power. Number two are the special interests, the people footing the bill. Finally, the public good might be third - if they can profit from it. If there's no profit, they could care less.

McMahon, I'm disgusted. Once again you've edited tapes to prove your point! You know, if you'd have been around when Nixon was in the White House, he'd still be the President! You know I'm right, you're not foolin' anybody; there's a lot of dissension on that team, and you're involved in the cover-up!

Truscott: And you complain you were beaten? Dennis: Yes. Truscott: Did you tell anyone? Dennis: Yes. Truscott: Who? Dennis: The officer in charge. Truscott: What did he say? Dennis: Nothing. Truscott: Why not? Dennis: He was out of breath with kicking.

Fay: I'm innocent till I'm proved guilty. This is a free country. The law is impartial. Truscott: Who's been filling your head with that rubbish? Fay: I can't be had for anything. You've no proof. Truscott: When I make out my report I shall say you've given me a confession. It could prejudice your case if I have to forge one.

Truscott: You're fucking nicked, my old beauty. You've found to your cost that the standards of the British police force are as high as ever. McLeavy: What am I charged with? Truscott: That needn't concern you for the moment. We'll fill in the details later. McLeavy: You can't do this. I've always been a law-abiding citizen. The police are for the protection of ordinary people. Truscott: I don't know where you pick up these slogans, sir. You must read them on hoardings.

We have now, it Seems a National Bible Society, to propagate King James's Bible, through all Nations. Would it not be better to apply these pious Subscriptions, to purify Christendom from the Corruptions of Christianity; than to propagate those Corruptions in Europe Asia, Africa and America! ... Conclude not from all this, that I have renounced the Christian religion, or that I agree with Dupuis in all his Sentiments. Far from it. I see in every Page, Something to recommend Christianity in its Purity and Something to discredit its Corruptions. ... The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my Religion.

Business - the world's work - is the sale of lies: Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more In every branch becomes the sale of money.

A prowde hert in a beggers brest, A fowle visage with gay temples of atyre, Horrible othes with an holy prist, A justice of juges to selle and lete to hyre, A knave to comande and have an empire, To yeve a jugement of that never was wrought, To preche of pees and sette eche man on fyre, It may wele ryme but it accordith nought.

The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life. Much more is this so in an animal. We may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it; but not the animal's limb. Thus, intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness - completeness of depending of each part on all the rest. The ceasing of this help is what we call corruption; and in proportion to the perfectness of the help, is the dreadfulness of the loss. The more intense the life has been, the more terrible is its corruption.

Did I ever tell you about Goebbels? He incurred Hitler's disapproval after that incident with the movie actress for which he was beaten up. That clubfooted fanatic! He forced women to submit to him sexually because of his powerful position. He influenced Hitler to become anti-Semitic more than Hitler had been before. Hitler used to come to my house once in a while for a cup of coffee, and because I led a normal life, he would leave about nine o'clock. I was in the habit of retiring early. However, Hitler used to spend practically all of his nights, sometimes until four a.m., with Goebbels and his family. God knows what evil influence Goebbels had on him during those long visits.

They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.

I won't be bullied, and I can't be bought!

'Good governance is also about rooting out corruption, which is a stain on the integrity of any nation.'

'Recently we heard that a prominent parliamentarian converted government assets to his personal use. Very soon, we will hear of some prominent politicians evading tax deliberately. Very soon we will hear of people abusing their travel entitlements. We extend zero-tolerance to these kind of people and some years ago, we know that the former Prime Minister converted government funds to improve his own personal standing by renovating and upgrading his personal house. The member for Labasa Open went on a fishing trip at government expense ... This is fraud. I do not know want you want to call it, but it is fraud, using taxpayers' money for personal use.'

She said 'I'm young enough I'm old enough In the city machine Where industries Fill the fish full of mercury'

The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words.

Perverts the Prophets and purloins the Psalms.

You're so crooked, Dickie, if you swallowed a nail you'd shit a corkscrew.

Corruption ought not to be an inevitable product of democracy.

Parents and legislators love to blame people like us for corrupting the youth of this country, but the kids were corrupted long before we ever got to them.

Freedom! A wanton slut on a profligate's breast!

A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude.