Quotes About Corruption

Vice takes up her abode in many temples; and who can say that a fair outside shall not enshrine her?

great men are urged on to the abuse of power (when they need urging, which is not often), by their flatterers and dependents,

with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were

the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled

Cunning, ferocity, and drunkenness in all its stages, were there, in their strongest aspects; and women: some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness, almost fading as you looked: others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime: some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life: formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.

The same collection of cut-throats, crooks, and incompetents are still steering our planet's various ships of state.

And given how much of the evil and ugliness of the present world can be traced to money, can you imagine what the world will be like when money has been transformed?

The public corruption is the foundation on which corporations always depend for their political power. There is a natural tendency to coalition between them and the lowest strata of political intelligence and morality; for their agents must obey, not question. The lobby is their home, and the lobby thrives as political virtue decays. The ring is their symbol of power, and the ring is the natural enemy of political purity and independence.

Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. The hair-raising revelations of skullduggery and grand-scale thievery merely incite others to surpass by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations.

Some persons who are going to perdition: Whiskey-men, saloon-keepers, whoremongers, prostitutes, seducers of innocent virtue, wilful liars, theatre-goers, horse-racers, (and their kind,) tricksters in politics and business, and bad people of all grade are on the road to perdition.

It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.

The United States Senate opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

Politics: "poli" (many) and "tics" (blood-sucking parasites).

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

This used to be a government of checks and balances. Now it's all checks and no balances.

Power, then, is the final trap, the ultimate corrupter: the closer religion becomes linked with state power, the further it drifts away from the realm of intellect and spirit and into the realm of the political—with direct implications for state power and authority. The state cannot then be indifferent to theology. When the state's official beliefs and doctrines are challenged, the state's authority itself is challenged—and the state does not look kindly upon it.

The evil prosper, and the innocent pay the bills for them.

I love this book. When other U.S. reporters were licking Ken Lay's loafers, Leopold went for Enron's thieving throat. Leopold is a journalist who insists on real investigative reporting–inside documents, inside sources, hard knife-in-the-gut evidence–detective-style reporting that is just about illegal in the U.S.A. Bravo and my personal Pulitzer to Jason Leopold. Every journalist in America should read this, then quit or riot.

He had not been right, had not been normal. And then his natural predisposition had been encouraged and further corrupted by "environmental factors." That was what his first psychologist had called it. "Environmental factors." Like being raped by a thirty-three-year-old man at the age of seven, Doctor? she'd wanted to yell. Is that an "environmental factor?

He was Chester the Molester. A rich businessman looking to adopt. A dealer in human organs on the black market.

stories are legion about people lying to their spouses for decades. It was a matter of survival; the Soviet regime forced them to deny their thoughts, identities and histories to the extent that they began to doubt themselves, a widespread psychological trauma that has yet to be fully acknowledged, let alone dealt with. No wonder the culture of lying remains deep-seated today, when the daily denial of reality provides fertile ground for Russia's staggering corruption.

The poor are pawns in a political-economic system contrived to keep those in power powerful and rich. Although the stake most people have in the going scheme is tiny, it's been enough to help isolate the majority of Russians from one another and keep them from acting in their common interests by joining forces against the country's top-down corruption.

Time had not altered the beauty of his countenance, nor darkened the brightness of his eyes. He continued on the same, preserved in an incorruptible beauty in the corruptibleness of nature.