Quotes About Corruption

With so many people, democracy is impossible, and corruption is so easy.

I don't know, Mr. Mason," he said at last, "whether evil is like a weed that grows in suitable conditions, or whether it is a condition that occurs in some human beings. Be that as it may, I have no doubt at all that the men who run those cartels are evil, in the deepest, simplest, plainest sense of the word. Evil.

Evil is contagious, Mr. Mason, and it feeds on greed and power.

Politics was an illusion of service that cloaked the corruption of power. It was lies, deceptions, self-interest, and self-aggrandizement: suitable work only for the mad and the venal and the naïve.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was above corruption so long as human beings were involved.

You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.

The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of politicians.

Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government may remain for a season, the substance has departed forever.

Is it only a coincidence that the same arc of time defining this reinvigorated clerical corruption about sexuality has seen the rise of the fervently political Catholic Church crusade against abortion? It is as if the 1973 war Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court threw a lifeline to the morally discredited Catholic hierarchy.

Generating a neurotic pathology in many priests, and prompting many others to protect themselves and the institution instead of victims, clericalism, I will argue in this book, is both the root cause and the corrupter, the ongoing enabler of the present Catholic catastrophe. The priesthood itself is warped.

Part of the reason that Rome fell is simply that it had expanded beyond the scale at which the economies of violence could be maintained. The cost of garrisoning the empire's far-flung borders exceeded the economic advantages that an ancient agricultural economy could support. The burden of taxation and regulation required to finance the military effort rose to exceed the carrying capacity of the economy. Corruption became endemic.

What kind of world has this become?" "A really sick one

it was impossible to get into—unless you were extremely rich, famous, or high up on the criminal chain. Or, of course, a politician, which would make you all of the above.

The world, the people I work for"—he gestured to nothing in particular all around him—"it's all turned my heart into a small lump of black coal.

First of all, word is that the Flare is running rampant through this whole shuck city and that all kinds of corruption is going on to hide it because the ones who are sick are government bigwigs. They're hiding the virus with the Bliss—it slows down the Flare so people who have it can blend in with everyone else, but the virus keeps spreading. My guess is it's the same all over the world. There's just no way to keep that beast out.

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

Power intoxicates men. When a man is intoxicated by alcohol, he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.

I think people might be willing to pay for the special odor of corruption which, I hope, floats over my stories.

A spirit could not be coerced into corruption, it had to be seduced. It had to participate actively. It had to crave.

As the blood flowed back to his brain, he turned back into the rather formal young man I had worked so hard to corrupt.

Deception begins with bureaucracy," Palpatine said.

The power of the dark side is an illness no true Sith would wish to be cured of.