Quotes About Corruption

When you see that in order to produce, you need to ask permission from men who produce nothing - When you see the money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged 1957

The desire was not directed at the unknown thug who had sent a bullet through the boy's body, or at the looting bureaucrats who had hired the thug to do it, but at the boy's teachers who had delivered him, disarmed, to the thug's gun—at the soft, safe assassins of college classrooms who, incompetent to answer the queries of a quest for reason, took pleasure in crippling the young minds entrusted to their care.

sustituiremos la aristocracia del dinero por... —... la aristocracia del pillaje

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

slowly undermining the institutions that make democracy possible. They champion free markets while engaging in the same corruption, cronyism, and exploitation as existed in the past." He confirmed that the economic

They were actors in a rigged game, I decided, and I wanted no part of it.

the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

In some ways the soviets simplified who the enemy was", Havel said, "Today autocrats are more sophisticated, they stand for election while slowly undermining institutions that make democracy possible. They champion free markets while engaging with the same corruption cronyism and exploitation that existed in the past.

Today, autocrats are more sophisticated. They stand for election while slowly undermining the institutions that make democracy possible. They champion free markets while engaging in the same corruption, cronyism, and exploitation as existed in the past.

the evils of the Soviet system struck me as a variation on a broader human tragedy: The way abstract theories and rigid orthodoxy can curdle into repression. How readily we justify moral compromise and relinquish our freedoms. How power can corrupt and fear can compound and language can be debased. None of that was unique to Soviets or Communists, I thought; it was true for all of us.

would have sympathized more had I not known that high-ranking Communist Party officials—including Wen—had a habit of steering state contracts and licenses to family members and siphoning billions into offshore accounts.

This prompted Reggie to ask me how the Ming dynasty finally ended. "Internal strife," I said. "Power struggles, corruption, peasants starving 'cause the rich got greedy or just didn't care…" "So, the usual," Reggie said. I nodded. "The usual.

In this town, white politicians and black ministers seemed to go together like tears and tissues. At election time, the pols got religion and came looking for the blessings of black ministers as a way to get black votes without providing the kinds of services to black communities that they at least promised to East Boston and Charlestown and the other mostly white Boston neighborhoods.

sold to the public on false pretenses, high officials confessing to ordering torture in violation of treaty and domestic law, and an economic meltdown even former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledges involved massive fraud—and no one has been prosecuted, no one has gone to prison, and Americans continue to dutifully cast their votes for the Democratic/Republican duopoly responsible for these disasters.

He imagined a frog in a pot, the water getting gradually warmer, the frog never noticing any of it. He imagined people telling themselves they would never be part of something corrupt, then telling themselves they would only be part of it to make it better, then telling themselves, hey, the thing wasn't corrupt in the first place, it was just the way of the world, they'd been naïve before and now they were savvy.

societies are like organisms, and no organism is invulnerable to disease. What matters is whether an organism can mount an effective defense when it finds itself under attack. In Japan, the virus of corruption has attacked the immune system itself, like a societal form of AIDS. Consequently, the body has lost its ability to defend itself.

Fraud, my children! Fraud and forgery. Dry rot covered with paint and gilded with lies

Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?

Looking back on it, Sloat wasn't sure how he had tolerated Phil Sawyer for as long as he had. His partner had never played to win, not seriously; he had been encumbered by sentimental notions of loyalty and honor, corrupted by the stuff you told kids to get them halfway civilized before you finally tore the blindfold off their eyes.

Rancid horse penises, sold as meat at the company store, triggered the walkout.

There's a hole in the world like a big black pit who are filled with people who are filled with shit.

The bed sheet brigade is bad enough, but the real threat to Americans and human rights today is the plain clothes Klux in the halls of government and certain black-robed Klux on court benches.

Politics is a powerful drug.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary - James Madison