Actions Quotes Logo

Corruption Quotes

Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take aw...

Show More

Suddenly I was tired of Lotterman; he was a phony and he didn't even know it. He was forever yapping...

Show More

You can not change the past but you can change the future.

He hoped that none of his descendants would get mixed up in politics, which was a trade for butchers...

Show More
Picture of Isabel Allende
Isabel AllendeThe House of the Spirits

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't f...

Show More

A new problem appears: devices that optimize the performance of the human body for the purpose of pr...

Show More
Picture of Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François LyotardThe Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

... In the discourse of today's financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scie...

Show More
Picture of Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François LyotardThe Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, ...

Show More
Picture of Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy BenthamConstitutional Code; For the Use All Nations and All Governments Professing Liberal Opinions Volume 1

If you're patriotic, stand up for the Bill of Rights because once they strip your rights from you, y...

Show More

This is a matter of public health. The public was sick and tired of DeLay and his corruption.

Do you know we are being led toSlaughters by placid admirals& that fat slow generals are gettingObsc...

Show More

Fighting corruption is not just good governance. It's self-defense. It's patriotism.

The Church has an excellent appetite. She has swallowed whole countries and the questionHas never ri...

Show More

No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ult...

Show More

Samuel understood at last why this being hated men and women so much: he hated them because they wer...

Show More

As long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the...

Show More

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

That is how war corrupts us. It plays on our pride in our own free will.

By this means the government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and n...

Show More
Picture of John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard KeynesThe Economic Consequences of the Peace

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

[The wilderness] had caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced hi...

Show More
Picture of Joseph Conrad
Joseph ConradHeart of Darkness

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds...

Show More
Picture of Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio HearnInventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn

[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of...

Show More

Start with putting three of your friends to jail. You definitely know what for, and people will beli...

Show More
Picture of Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan YewFrom Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal...

Show More

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I mi...

Show More

If, though full of respect for social conventions and never overstepping the bounds they draw round ...

Show More

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whis...

Show More

Sometimes I felt the bloated Toad, hideous and pampered with the poisonous vapours of the dungeon, d...

Show More

These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does.

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

I must have had some high object in life, for I feel unbounded strength within me. But I never disco...

Show More

I've an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and...

Show More

Come forward as servants of Islam, organize the people economically, socially, educationally and pol...

Show More

You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social ju...

Show More

Somebody had said how only 15 paisa of the one rupee sent from the Centre reached the intended benef...

Show More

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

Picture of Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas TalebThe Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, ...

Show More
Picture of Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas TalebThe Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.

Picture of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel HawthorneThe House of the Seven Gables

This is about systemic, institutional corruption, not personality. To ask the Democratic leadership ...

Show More

Corruption, the greatest single bane of our society today.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, ...

Show More

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault...

Show More

Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?

Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray

In this financial year we will be spending at least $1.5 billion on foreign aid and we cannot be sur...

Show More

This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field wit...

Show More

Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who ...

Show More

Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.

Darling, no one would ever dream of performing an operation on a child without testing it first. And...

Show More

They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privi...

Show More
Picture of Primo Levi
Primo LeviIf This Is a Man / The Truce

Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Ma...

Show More

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infi...

Show More

It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts....nothing we do is right, n...

Show More

and the best, if not heedfully used, will prove the word. The better and keener the knife is, the so...

Show More
Picture of Richard Baxter
Richard BaxterThe Saints' Everlasting Rest

O blessed be the grace that makes advantages of my corruptions, even to contradict and kill themselv...

Show More
Picture of Richard Baxter
Richard BaxterThe Saints' Everlasting Rest

I have done many impious things--no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire ...

Show More

I almost forgot to tell you - you have the right to remain silent, but if you do, my boys at the sta...

Show More

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

A DEAD STATESMANI could not dig: I dared not rob:Therefore I lied to please the mob.Now all my lies ...

Show More

A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia get...

Show More

I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome...

Show More

An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreter...

Show More

It only too often yields to the temptation to become sycophantic, opportunist and lying, like a poli...

Show More
Picture of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund FreudThe Ego and the Id

I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing...

Show More

They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line...

Show More

A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he...

Show More

Malus: 'You look like a person with doubts.'Zoe: 'I wonder sometimes if any of this is real - or is ...

Show More

People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There ...

Show More

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to...

Show More

Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to p...

Show More
Picture of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas JeffersonWritings: Autobiography/Notes on the State of Virginia/Public & Private Papers/Addresses/Letters

There was simply no peace to be had no matter where you hid yourself away. Even in a northern border...

Show More

It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr...

Show More

We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billiona...

Show More

All religions worthy of the name are now making great efforts to purify their doctrines and return t...

Show More

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as [inherently] exceptional, whateve...

Show More

Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities--you will find them in the government, in...

Show More

Not even ten additional years of slavery could have done so much to throttle the thrift of the freed...

Show More

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto eithe...

Show More

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto eithe...

Show More

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto eithe...

Show More

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto eithe...

Show More

People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped by influence, by power, by us.

It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be...

Show More

Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile.'I like that idea. It's reassuring. I...

Show More
Picture of Willa Cather
Willa CatherAmerican Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps

I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me...

Show More

The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for her to destroy them, she ha...

Show More

The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the gove...

Show More

Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,And solid p...

Show More

Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power, or debased by the habit of obedience; but by the exe...

Show More

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption a...

Show More

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they...

Show More

In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligen...

Show More

Corruption,' Jordan Belfort believes, 'is endemic to human being. I mean, even men in monasteries - ...

Show More

Every time there's elections, we hand out cash. Usually to both sides, but this time the government ...

Show More

Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only prais...

Show More

People often don't understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume ...

Show More
Picture of Arundhati Roy
Arundhati RoyThe Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy

Rather to my surprise, I found myself genuinely indignant at the suggestion that murder was to be re...

Show More

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of...

Show More