Quotes About Corruption

The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.

Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Unlimited Power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins.

Gold is worse poison to a man's soul, doing more murders in this loathsome world, than any mortal drug.

Let none presumeTo wear an undeserved dignity.O! that estates, degrees, and officesWere not deriv'd corruptly, and that clear honorWere purchas'd by the merit of the wearer.

We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.

Thieves for their robbery have authority When judges steal themselves.

A politician… one that would circumvent God.

There's small choice in rotten apples.

See, sons, what things you are!How quickly nature falls into revoltWhen gold becomes her object!

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

I hate ingratitude more in a manThan lying, vainness, babbling drunkenness,Or any taint of vice whose strong corruptionInhabits our frail blood.

O! thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint.

Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me.

Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth.

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Things rank and gross in naturePossess it merely. That it should come to this!

William Shakespeare

First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Oh, thou hast a damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked.

Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.

Whereas the rulers of Germany in 1914 and her allies who provoked World War I were—to use the term in its most generous sense—at least "gentlemen," the leaders of the Axis powers in 1941 were thugs. They were, most of them, amoral murderers and brutish torturers who gained power through assassination and corruption, and more than sixty years after the fact this remains a stubborn truth.