Quotes About Corruption

forty thousand of them. It was a

Having bought so many politicians in his day, the Baron could hardly be blamed for taking a cynical attitude to the breed; now, since they were refusing to stay bought, he could hardly be blamed if he had decided to get rid of them.

It made smuggling easy; but I was nervous of getting involved, because a government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you.

Stacy hated people who abused digital systems. It affronted her that they had fatally undermined the fundamental beauty and purity of the internet. They'd corrupted the most revolutionary invention of the twentieth century and turned it into an engine for triviality, for vitriol, for scamming...

Wherever you are, somebody's inflicting horror on another human being. It's just that there are some environments where it's easier to get away with it.

You can't walk straight on a crooked line. You try you'll break your leg. How can you walk straight in a crooked system?

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menaechmus of talent, has one dupe,--history.

Succeed; that is the advice that falls, drop by drop, from the overhanging fruit of corruption.

And that is how a self-seeking hotchpotch distorts and debases the very finest social schemes. It is the black vein in white marble; it gets everywhere, appears under your chisel at any moment without warning. Your statue has to be redone.

Hence, that crown is the money of hell.

There are souls which, crab-like, crawl continually toward darkness, going back in life rather than advancing in it, using what experience they have to increase their deformity, growing worse without ceasing, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying wickedness.

They appeared very corrupt and very depraved, no doubt, very vile, very odious even; but those who fall without becoming degraded are rare; besides, there is a point where the unfortunate and the infamous unite and are confounded in a single word, a fatal word, the miserable; whose fault is this? And then should not the charity be all the more profound, in proportion as the fall is great?

The cities make ferocious men because they may corrupt man. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they development fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.

It combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity, a curious variety of civilization; a tiger with a simper.

A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society. Succeed--that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption.

We live in a sad society. Succeed--that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption. In passing, we might say that success is a hideous thing. Its false similarity to merit deceives men.

We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.

The poacher works in the woods, and the smuggler in the mountains or on the sea. The towns make men ferocious because it makes them corrupt. Mountains, sea, and forest make men reckless. They stir the wildness of men's nature, but do not necessarily destroy what is human

We live in a squalid society. Success: this is the message seeping, drop by drop, down from the overriding corruption.

Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.

The cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.

The senator...was a smart man who had made his way in life with a single-mindedness oblivious to any of those stumbling blocks known as conscience, sworn oaths, justice, duty...