Quotes About Corruption

With absolute power, corruption and evil seep in humanity, and that evil continues to flourish as the good of humankind lies idle in darkness, hidden from the Word that brings the light. — Paul Hill Paraphrasing of Edmund Burke, John Dalberg, and John 1:1-5 quotes.

Biographers who admire Marx and seek to cover for him will want to ignore his poetry among his corpus of writings. They should nonetheless bristle at what they see in Marx's poetry. They will encounter what Paul Johnson discerned: "Savagery is a characteristic note of his verse, together with the intense pessimism of the human condition, hatred, a fascination with corruption and violence, suicide pacts and pacts with the devil."82

In both countries the ruling parties—Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary—have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption, and effectively delegitimized dissent. The result seems likely to be one-party rule for the foreseeable future.

First, if we fail to meet the challenge of climate change, with catastrophic results—which seems all too likely—it won't be the result of an innocent failure to understand what was at stake. It will, instead, be a disaster brought on by corruption, willful ignorance, conspiracy theorizing, and intimidation.

The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phony and fragile as East Germany did thirty years ago.

The permutations of English corruption in India were endless – affection for servants, for peasants, for soldiers, pretence at understanding the Indian intellectual or at sympathizing with nationalist aspirations, but all this affection and understanding was a corruption of what he called the calm purity of their contempt.

That seemed to be a feature of life in the country [Malawi]: to welcome strangers, to let them live out their fantasy of philanthropy - a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a welfare center, a malaria eradication program, or a church; and then determine if in any of this effort and expense there was a side benefit - a kickback, a bribe, an easy job, a free vehicle. If the scheme didn't work - and few of them did work - whose fault was that? Whose idea was it in the first place?

In countries where all the crooked politicians wear pinstriped suits, the best people are bare-assed.

Someone knows—someone in the government, or the army, or the police. This is a government of secrets. If there are secrets, there can be no justice.

I had, under pressure, handed over bribes many times before.

So Walmart bribed Mexican officials to redraw the map in its favor, the map was published, and the big-box horror store was built, its obscene size swelling over the pyramids. But this was not the end.

Nothing moves in India without a bribe, and bribes had been demanded of me in China, Africa, Brazil, Pakistan, and Turkey. As I was seated in a cubicle in the immigration office of Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar, Bali, a frowning man in a uniform loomed over me and said, "Give me what I want or I put you on the next plane to Kuala Lumpur." (I gave him $120.) I'd had my wits about me in those places.

This corruption has become systemic, a way of doing business. Cops make money by shaking down anyone they can.

The murderous, self-elected, megalomaniacal head of state with the morals of a fruit fly, with his decades in power, along with his vain, flitting shopaholic wife, his hangers-on, and his goon squad, is an obscene feature of African life that is not likely to disappear.

The sight of bribery on the back road of any country is a clear indication that the whole place is corrupt and the regime a thieving tyranny, as Angola has been for the thirty-five years of its independence—and likely much longer, since Portuguese colonial rule was also an extortion racket.

there is a substratum of criminality even in Mexico's prosperous places, especially in the prosperous places, and it takes unexpected forms.

The murderous, self-elected, megalomaniacal head of state with the morals of a fruit fly is an obscene feature of African life that is not likely to disappear.

The sight of bribery on the back road of any country is a clear indication that the whole place is corrupt and the regime a thieving tyranny

I refuse to give the police a mordida." A bribe.

crooked police, cruel soldiers, and a government indifferent to the plight of most citizens.

People in power—police, politicians—believe they can get away with murder.

Mexicans spend very little time railing against the US government, because in their experience, government by its very nature is corrupt, often criminal, and the poor are its victims.

Part of the reason for police shakedowns

Given the right circumstances, every human being n this earth would be willing to commit evil.