Quotes About Corruption

To dissociate politicians from capitalists is slightly disingenuous, to put it mildly. U.S. lawmakers are competitive and auction themselves to the highest bidder via the lobby system.

A vibrant civil society can challenge those in power by documenting corruption or uncovering activities like the murder of political enemies. In democracies, this function is mostly performed by the media, NGOs or opposition parties.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases man.

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

Vice is Washington's signature. A fish rots from the head, and Washington has led our country into vice, greed, selfishness, and the mockery and destruction of human life.

We have come to expect campaigns to be mean and stupid and politicians to be unresponsive, self-seeking and for sale to the highest bidder. We make jokes about our vice president, and all we ask of a president is that he be likeable. We seem to have given up on the Pentagon's corrupt use of our tax dollars.

Joe Biden abused the power of the Office of the Vice President, enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, by allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits - including financial compensation - from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.

No. 1, Halliburton. Certainly, if they've overcharged they should be whacked and whacked good, but the idea that the vice president somehow is involved in this, whether they got contracts because of him, that's nonsense.

All institutions are prone to corruption and to the vices of their members.

Human depravity originates in the vices of political constitution.

Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake.

Ultimately, it is only a powerful civil society movement which can break the vicious cycle of corruption in any society.

We encourage whistleblowers to come forward in instances where the government is a victim.

Corruption is a huge problem and the poor and the powerless are often its most egregious victims. But it is not an accident that the most effective bureaucracies in the world rely much more on internal controls rather than on independent ombudsmen.

Aid can only reach the victims of war by paying off the warlords and, sometimes, extending the war.

Nelson Mandela, Dada Vaswani, Harsh Mander, Shabana Azmi - I admire their humanitarian work. But sadly even Nelson Mandela could not keep corruption out of his cabinet and within a year, I am told, the victims of apartheid turned into perpetrators of corruption on their own people. Greed has no boundaries of colour or country does it?

When the state machinery defends criminals and the public prosecutors collude with the accused in certain cases and the victims are members of a particular community, then 'Justice to all' is empty rhetoric.

Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.

Three key elements triggered NDA's spectacular 2014 election victory - taking development and prosperity to the lowest rung of society, eradication of corruption, and ensuring transparency and ease of doing business.

Citizens United was no victory for free speech.

Since Bin Laden's death, many Americans have decided that our job in Afghanistan is done. They see a victory in the counterterrorism campaign, and are tired of the corruption, confusion and dysfunction of the nation-building campaign.

I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secured on the back of massive parliamentary majorities, which don't reflect the balance of political opinion in the country - can corrupt absolutely.

Justice may be blind but it loves the sound of money.