Quotes About Corruption

There seemed to be no one in a position of power, from the Vatican to Wall Street, from Parliament to Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, who could think of anything better to do than abuse it....

The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.

State power has an unbroken record of inability to do anything efficiently, economically, disinterestedly or honestly; yet when the slightest dissatisfaction arises over any exercise of social power, the aid of the agent least qualified to give aid is immediately called for.

Nevertheless there was an anomaly here. We were all supposed to respect our government and its laws, yet by all accounts those who were charged with the conduct of government and the making of its laws were most dreadful swine; indeed, the very conditions of their tenure precluded their being anything else.

There is no limit of degradation to which power cannot bring anyone even with the loftiest principles. We would hope that being unprepared for power, they would be ineffective. Their task is not "seize power" (those who use this term show that they seek personal power for themselves) but to abolish the bases for power. Power to all means power to nobody in particular.

One of the mistakes I made was placing too much trust in Montesinos.

We know that laws ought to be obeyed only if they come out of people's sense of justice, not because the state needs them to preserve its power. Laws devised for the depravity of power are as worthless as the paper they are printed on.

Negativity, lack, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, are perceived more and more as moral faults-worse, as a corruption at the level of our very being or bare life.

baratteria, il termine con cui genericamente si indicavano corruzione, concussione e peculato. La baratteria era l'incubo della vita politica italiana (nel Medioevo, s'intende)

Bullies, oppressors and all men who do violence to the rights of others are guilty not only of their own crimes, but also of the corruption they bring into the hearts of their victims.

Most members of the political elites of north-east Africa have come to resemble gangsters rather than civic political leaders.

Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.

An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state for the acquisition of wealth. No. 75

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own

The excellence of the trial by jury in civil cases appears to depend on circumstances foreign to the preservation of liberty. The strongest argument in its favor is, that it is a security against corruption. As there is always more time and better opportunity to tamper with a standing body of magistrates than with a jury summoned for the occasion, there is room to suppose that a corrupt influence would more easily find its way to the former than to the latter.

Before such a revolution can be effected, the Senate, it is to be observed, must in the first place corrupt itself; must next corrupt the State legislatures; must then corrupt the House of Representatives; and must finally corrupt the people at large. It is evident that the Senate must be first corrupted before it can attempt an establishment of tyranny.

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former -- of the corruption of the will.

The Russian system of justice and police is so haphazard, so inhuman, so arbitrary and corrupt, that a poor malefactor has more reason to fear his trial than his sentence. He is impatient for the time when he will be sent to Siberia; for his martyrdom comes to an end when his punishment begins.

We are not the doctors. We are the disease

Bloody bullocks, beggin' your pardon, gentlemen, but they'd take the wooden leg off a cripple to kindle a fire!

She'd always said that there must be something very bad about money, because those who needed it most never had it, and so many who had it would do such awful things to get more of it. The

But when to mischief mortals bend their will,How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

Party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

All seems infected that th' infected spy,As all looks yellow to the jaundic'd eye.