Quotes and Sayings about Corruption
"A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay."
- Amos Bronson Alcott
(Related: Business, Government, Corruption)
"Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life."
- Saul Alinsky
(Related: Life, Politics, Time, Mother, Father, Bed, Corruption, Play)
"The starting point of sanctification is the filthiness, corruption, or stain of sin."
- William Ames
(Related: Corruption, Sin)
"I have a very steadfast tendency to parent myself, to monitor my development into the person I want to be. I've tried to keep the corruption minimal."
- Fiona Apple
(Related: Development, Corruption, Want)
"The corruption in reporting starts very early. It's like the police reporting on the police."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Corruption, Police)
"I will be happy with certainly when the corruption index improve."
- Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
(Related: Corruption, Will)
"Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption."
- Andre Bazin
(Related: Art, Time, Corruption, Eternity, Photography)
"It's not just spending, it's not just taxes, it's not just corruption, it is progressivism, and it is in both parties. It is in the Republicans and the Democrats."
- Glenn Beck
(Related: Corruption, Democrats, Republicans, Taxes)
"I filed the ethics complaint against Tom DeLay not because I'm a Democrat and he's a Republican or even because he drew me out of my congressional seat but because he engaged in corruption to further his plans to disenfranchise voters in Texas."
- Chris Bell
(Related: Complaint, Corruption, Delay, Ethics, Republican)
"The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means."
- Georges Bernanos
(Related: Society, Corruption, End, First)
"What saddens me is the corruption of youth and beauty, and the loss of soul, which is only replaced by money."
- Lisa Bonet
(Related: Money, Beauty, Soul, Corruption, Loss, Youth)
"Only the old are innocent. That is what the Victorians understood, and the Christians. Original sin is a property of the young. The old grow beyond corruption very quickly."
- Malcolm Bradbury
(Related: Corruption, Old, Property, Sin)
"No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power."
- Jacob Bronowski
(Related: Politics, Power, Science, Corruption)
"Big government conservatives are spending trillions and wasting billions. Republicans are no longer the party of fiscal conservancy, but the party of runaway spending and corruption."
- Sherrod Brown
(Related: Government, Corruption, Party, Republicans)
"As a consequence, the Court ruled that the limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment, but it accepted the $1,000 limit on individual contributions on the ground that the need to avoid the appearance of corruption justified this limited constraint on speech."
- James L. Buckley
(Related: Appearance, Corruption, Court, First, Limits, Speech)
"What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes."
- James L. Buckley
(Related: Money, People, Corruption, Office)
"The kind of corruption the media talk about, the kind the Supreme Court was concerned about, involves the putative sale of votes in exchange for campaign contributions."
- James L. Buckley
(Related: Corruption, Court, Media, Talk)
"This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle."
- James L. Buckley
(Related: Ambition, Corruption, Legislators)
"The corruption of people is to behave in an inhuman way."
- Alan Bullock
(Related: People, Corruption)
"Look, we know we screwed up when we were in the majority. We fell in love with power. We spent way too much money - especially on earmarks. There was too much corruption when we ran this place. We were guilty. And that's why we lost."
- Eric Cantor
(Related: Love, Money, Power, Corruption, Majority)
"As a columnist, I realize that whatever amount of corruption I expose, half my readers will block it out, although they may get a frisson of joy in the process."
- Margaret Carlson
(Related: Corruption, Joy, May, Will)
"Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us."
- John Jay Chapman
(Related: Action, Corruption, Machine, Man, Prejudice, Reason)
"The duty of youth is to challenge corruption."
- Kurt Cobain
(Related: Challenge, Corruption, Duty, Youth)
"Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Corruption, Snow)
"We did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption."
- George Creel
(Related: Corruption, Deceit, Propaganda, Word)
"I've been not only articulating the dissatisfaction with Albany, I've been acting on it. I've been very aggressive in bringing public integrity cases and public corruption cases and bringing cases against sitting legislators."
- Andrew Cuomo
(Related: Acting, Corruption, Integrity, Legislators, Public)
"New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it's a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush."
- Andrew Cuomo
(Related: Government, Time, Boss, Performance, Blush, Corruption, Disgrace, Now, State, Taxes)
"Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we're tired of hearing promises that we know they'll never keep."
- Ray Davies
(Related: Money, Corruption, Hearing, Land, Man, Politicians, Promises, Sheep)
"Simply that we are mirroring the trends in society, at any given time smuggling was an issue in the seventies, corruption is an issue today, and we faithfully reflect those issues."
- Ajay Devgan
(Related: Time, Society, Corruption, Today)
"Corruption never has been compulsory."
- Anthony Eden
(Related: Corruption)
"And I am saying, how about the other two branches? And putting the pressure on our representatives in the Senate and the Congress, and the court system. They should be counter-acting this corruption, but they are sitting there silent."
- Sibel Edmonds
(Related: Congress, Corruption, Court, Pressure, Saying, Senate)
"Until we can fully grasp the extent of corruption and fraud involved in the administration of the Oil-for-Food program, and until the United Nations decides to cooperate in the investigation, no American taxpayer dollars should go to the United Nations."
- John Ensign
(Related: American, Corruption, Fraud, Investigation, Nations, Oil, United)
"I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power."
- Joe Eszterhas
(Related: Power, Corruption)
"Public office is supposed to be a public trust. This is a clear sign of the rampant corruption at the highest levels of the Republican leadership."
- Bob Etheridge
(Related: Leadership, Trust, Corruption, Office, Public, Public trust, Republican)
"The accumulation of numbers always augments in some measure moral corruptions, and the consequences to health of the various vices incident thereto, are well known."
- William Falconer
(Related: Health, Consequences, Measure, Numbers, Vices)
"Look at Mexico. We need to make that government better and end the corruption. If people have a better life in their country, they won't come over here."
- Tony Garza
(Related: Government, Life, People, Corruption, Country, End)
"Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty."
- Edward Gibbon
(Related: Corruption, Liberty)
"The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country."
- Newt Gingrich
(Related: Government, Time, Truth, Corruption, Country)
"Cutting up fowl to predict the future is, if done honestly and with as little interpretation as possible, a kind of randomization. But chicken guts are hard to read and invite flights of fancy or corruption."
- Ian Hacking
(Related: Corruption, Fancy, Future)
"In this financial year we will be spending at least $1.5 billion on foreign aid and we cannot be sure that this money will be properly spent, as corruption and mismanagement in many of the recipient countries are legend."
- Pauline Hanson
(Related: Money, Financial, Corruption, Countries, Will)
"If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change - even though they don't really know what they're trying to prevent - then you can get pessimistic."
- Paul Hawken
(Related: Change, Corruption, Focus, Trying)
"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."
- Alexander Herzen
(Related: Morality, Corruption, Obedience, Slavery, Violence, Will)
"This is a matter of public health. The public was sick and tired of DeLay and his corruption."
- Jim Hightower
(Related: Health, Corruption, Delay, Public)
"The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination."
- Richard Hofstadter
(Related: Imagination, Character, Corruption, University, World)
"Therefore, until the day I die, I am going to do what I can, regardless of the cost to me, to try to stop this awful corruption that is destroying our beloved democracy."
- John Jay Hooker
(Related: Corruption, Day, Democracy)
"Over the last decade, at considerable cost to me in money and effort, confronted with ridicule and intimidation, I have brought more than a dozen lawsuits challenging the corruption in the election process in Tennessee."
- John Jay Hooker
(Related: Money, Corruption, Effort, Ridicule)
"Nay, men are so far from musing of their sins, that they disdain this practise, and scoff at it: what say they, if all were of your mind; what should become of us? Shall we be always poring on our corruptions?"
- Thomas Hooker
(Related: Men, Mind)
"The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst."
- David Hume
(Related: Corruption)
"We see violence to forcibly seize land, at any price, murders and corruption."
- Claudio Hummes
(Related: Corruption, Land, Violence)
"I am a relatively new Member to this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic process."
- Jay Inslee
(Related: Corruption)
"It's very simple. If the American people care about a lot of things including corruption in government, then, in fact, if you use the power to appoint in order to do political business, to clear fields, to save your party money and so on, if it's not a crime - and I believe it is - it certainly is business as usual, politics of corruption."
- Darrell Issa
(Related: Business, Money, Politics, Power, Government, People, American, Care, Corruption, Crime, Fact, Order, Party)
"I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office."
- Andrew Jackson
(Related: People, Successful, Corruption, Country, Day, Rights, Liberty, Office, Promises)
"The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough."
- Andrew Jackson
(Related: Power, People, Corruption, Right, Will)
"No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery."
- Harriet Ann Jacobs
(Related: Corruption, Pen, Slavery)
"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: Power, Corruption, Country, Destruction, First, Now, Road, Will)
"And it is to rock the soul and lead the person to immorality, corruption - to forget their prayers, to forget their God. And thus the world has partaken of the spirit of the Negro race, accepting their ways."
- Warren Jeffs
(Related: God, Soul, Corruption, Forget, Race, Spirit, World)
"If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher."
- Abdul Kalam
(Related: Mother, Father, Corruption, Country, Difference, Key, Nation)
"They have seized upon the government by bribery and corruption. They have made speculation and public robbery a science. They have loaded the nation, the state, the county, and the city with debt."
- Denis Kearney
(Related: Government, Science, Bribery, Corruption, Debt, Nation, Public, State)
"Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."
- John F. Kennedy
(Related: Power, War, Communism, Corruption, Country)
"Then there is the worst part of Christianity, which is awful: power, corruption, manipulation... But then again, these feature are ever present in any organization."
- Bruce Kent
(Related: Power, Christianity, Corruption, Manipulation, Present)
"The winner must promote social jusitce, remove corruption and discrmination, and stand against political, cultural and economic plots."
- Ayatollah Khamenei
(Related: Corruption)
"Personally I don't think solving corruption is such a big problem."
- Imran Khan
(Related: Corruption)
"I want to rid the country of corruption and return our economic environment."
- Nestor Kirchner
(Related: Corruption, Country, Environment, Want)
"Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age."
- Paul Klee
(Related: Age, Wisdom, Ability, Children, Corruption)
"The knife of corruption endangered the life of New York City. The scalpel of the law is making us well again."
- Edward Koch
(Related: Life, Corruption, Law)
"Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country."
- Karl Kraus
(Related: Corruption, Country, Morals, Prostitution)
"Still, corruption and oppression are far too common threats to the democratic society."
- Anna Lindh
(Related: Society, Corruption, Oppression)
"I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy."
- Wynton Marsalis
(Related: Idea, Corruption, Democracy, Eyes, Public)
"I think we need to start with Philadelphia and make sure that we actually get some election reform in Philadelphia. Actually, a recent election was thrown out by a federal judge because of corruption with the voting process in Philadelphia."
- Patrick McHenry
(Related: Corruption, Reform, Voting)
"We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave society devoid of belief."
- Jeff Miller
(Related: Religion, Society, Belief, Corruption, Country, Court, Poison, Will)
"It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption."
- Charles de Montesquieu
(Related: Age, People, Corruption)
"Whoever looks at America will see: the ship is powered by stupidity, corruption, or prejudice."
- Johann Most
(Related: America, Corruption, Prejudice, Stupidity, Will)
"The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference."
- Bess Myerson
(Related: Corruption, Crime, Indifference)
"I used to look down on the world for being corrupt, but now I adore it for the utter magnificence of that corruption."
- Richard J. Needham
(Related: Being, Corruption, Magnificence, Now, World)
"Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance."
- John Henry Newman
(Related: Corruption, Evil, Excess)
"The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul."
- Ben Nicholson
(Related: Soul, Corruption, Greed)
"The corruption of the American soul is consumerism."
- Ben Nicholson
(Related: Soul, American, Corruption)
"Corruption, the greatest single bane of our society today."
- Olusegun Obasanjo
(Related: Society, Corruption, Today)
"We are angry about paying the highest income taxes and property taxes in the nation and getting less and less for it. We are angry about our incompetent, dysfunctional government that pays no attention to the desires of the people. We are angry about the cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interests and self-dealing that is Albany."
- Carl Paladino
(Related: Government, People, Attention, Corruption, Income, Nation, Property, Self, Taxes)
"Other than my hundreds of arrests I really don't have that much experience with the law. While the majority of people aren't corrupt, there certainly is an awful lot of corruption in this country."
- James Patterson
(Related: Experience, People, Corruption, Country, Law, Majority)
"I would like to end world hunger and create world peace, stop corruption, stop drugs getting to kids."
- Kelly Preston
(Related: Peace, Corruption, Drugs, End, Hunger, Kids, World)
"In some of the countries where we operate, there is a tradition of corruption, in which the political elites work with business in the framework of unsavory relationships."
- Lee R. Raymond
(Related: Business, Work, Corruption, Countries, Relationships, Tradition)
"The fight for justice against corruption is never easy. It never has been and never will be. It exacts a toll on our self, our families, our friends, and especially our children. In the end, I believe, as in my case, the price we pay is well worth holding on to our dignity."
- Frank Serpico
(Related: Children, Corruption, Dignity, End, Fight, Friends, Justice, Self, Will, Worth)
"The boxing world is full of all kinds of corruption."
- Al Sharpton
(Related: Boxing, Corruption, World)
"Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Beauty, Society, Food, Life, Corruption)
"Corruption has its own motivations, and one has to thoroughly study that phenomenon and eliminate the foundations that allow corruption to exist."
- Eduard Shevardnadze
(Related: Corruption, Study)
"But eradicating corruption is not enough to sustain a country."
- Eduard Shevardnadze
(Related: Corruption, Country)
"If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established."
- Algernon Sidney
(Related: Power, Virtue, Corruption, Liberty, Vice)
"Feast of the Holy Cross Does not every man feel, that there is corruption enough within him to drive him to the commission of the greatest enormities, and eternally to destroy his soul?"
- Charles Simeon
(Related: Soul, Corruption, Man)
"Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice."
- Adlai E. Stevenson
(Related: Dream, Communism, Corruption, Justice)
"Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions."
- Jonathan Swift
(Related: Politics, Nothing, Word)
"In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous."
- Tacitus
(Related: Corruption, Laws, State)
"Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace."
- James Thomson
(Related: Peace, War, Corruption, Disgrace, Man, State)
"The first tenet is that you should report corruption regardless of loyalty to incumbent or party."
- Linda Tripp
(Related: Corruption, First, Loyalty, Party)
"Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy."
- Peter Ustinov
(Related: Faith, Nature, Corruption, Democracy)
"We do not need international help to stop corruption, we need strong Louisiana Leadership."
- David Vitter
(Related: Leadership, Corruption, Help)
"This circulating medium has a natural tendency to lessen by degrees the value and the use of money, and finally to render it powerless; and consequently to sweep away all the crushing masses of fraud, iniquity, cruelty, corruption and imposition that are built upon it."
- Josiah Warren
(Related: Money, Corruption, Cruelty, Fraud, Value)
"My government will be open. Anyone found guilty of corruption will be dealt with in accordance with the law. If you are corrupt you will have to hang your boots."
- George Weah
(Related: Government, Corruption, Law, Open, Will)
"The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it."
- Noah Webster
(Related: Religion, Christian, Europe, Support)
"None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind; witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature."
- Morris West
(Related: Nature, Failure, Corruption, Human nature, World)
"All institutions are prone to corruption and to the vices of their members."
- Morris West
(Related: Corruption, Vices)
"When I saw corruption, I was forced to find truth on my own. I couldn't swallow the hypocrisy."
- Barry White
(Related: Truth, Corruption, Hypocrisy)
"Rude contact with facts chased my visions and dreams quickly away, and in their stead I beheld the horrors, the corruption, the evils and hypocrisy of society, and as I stood among them, a young wife, a great wail of agony went out from my soul."
- Victoria Woodhull
(Related: Dreams, Society, Wife, Soul, Corruption, Facts, Hypocrisy, Visions, Wail)
"In the final analysis, the incident is seen as originating from an emotional expression of the frustration and anger of the proud people of China who had been subject to ever increasing oppression from without and decadent corruption from within."
- Chen Ning Yang
(Related: Anger, People, Corruption, Expression, Frustration, Oppression)
"In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."
- Anthony Zinni
(Related: War, Corruption, Incompetence, Iraq, Lying)