Quotes About Corruption

It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting--corruption and favoritism, mostly--endemic to the system.

At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse.

the court, as now constituted, would be meaningless without the jail which gives it its power. But if there is anything I have learned by being in jail, it is that prisons are wrong, simply and unqualifiedly wrong.

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions.

Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age.

They were deaf to disaffection, blind to the alternative ideas it gave rise to, blandly impervious to challenge, unconcerned by the dismay at their misconduct and the rising wrath at their misgovernment, fixed in refusal to change, almost stupidly stubborn in maintaining a corrupt existing system. They could not change it because they were part of it, grew out of it, depended on it.

Not a passing phenomenon nor an external force, the companies had become a way of life, a part of society itself, used and joined by its rulers even as they struggled to throw them off. They ate at society from within like Erysichthon, the "tearer up of earth," who, having destroyed the trees in the sacred grove of Demeter, was cursed by the goddess with an insatiable appetite and finally devoured himself attempting to satisfy his hunger. Discipline

When those who have the title of shepherd play the part of wolves," said Lothar of Saxony, "heresy grows in the garden of the Church.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on [office]," he wrote to a friend, "a rottenness begins in his conduct.

the fabled three horsemen of the fiscal apocalypse—fraud, waste, and abuse

The cultural value that the purpose of government is to serve and bring benefit to the people as a whole will likely serve as the single greatest deterrent against corruption in government.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man's liberty. Government represents power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And power, as Lord Acton said, corrupts men. "Absolute power," he added, "corrupts absolutely.

Graft and corruption are symptoms of the illness that besets the labor movement, not the cause of it. The cause is the enormous economic and political power now concentrated in the hands of union leaders.

Numbers of men are getting richer and greater numbers are getting poorer. Alas, both classes have higher expectations these days. In Short, sir, there has been a leap in bribes.

Grief works its own perversions and betrayals; the shape of what we have lost is as subject to corruption as the mortal body...

When I saw corruption, I was forced to find truth on my own. I couldn't swallow the hypocrisy.

En la reminiscencia, en efecto, el alma tiene el pensamiento de esta sensación, pero no en la continuidad de su duración. Así, la idea de la sensación no es la duración misma de la sensación, es decir, ella no es propiamente su memoria. En cuanto a saber si las ideas mismas están sujetas a alguna corrupción, lo veremos en la Filosofía.

Glorious empires can be founded on crime, and noble religions on imposture.

Evil comes up softly like a flower.

Remember with whom thou hast to do: what canst thou expect from dust but levity; or from corruption, but defilement?

When you're afraid, you look to amass power to defend yourself, not realizing that can also be corrupting.

The Court made an exception, however, in the case of candidates contributing to their own campaigns because of the rather reasonable presumption that a candidate is incapable of corrupting himself.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.