Corruption Quotes

Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.

~ Frank Herbert

Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities--you will find them in the government, in the law-courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation.

~ Voltaire

There’s always someone bigger and badder who can knock you off your perch—even if you’re me. Never forget it and you don’t have to worry about corruption. You’ll be too afraid with watching your own back. --Alexandria Dria McAndrews

~ C.j. Ellisson

I make love like a snake disguised as an elephant and a donkey. But I mustn’t talk about sexual congress and Congress simultaneously.


~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

Corporate greed controls political will.

~ Aaron B. Powell

But after living in Communist China for the past seventeen years, I knew that such a society was only a dream because those who seized power would invariably become the new ruling class. They would have the power to control the people’s lives and bend the people’s will. Because they controlled the production and distribution of goods and services in the name of the state, they would also enjoy material luxuries beyond the reach of the common people. In Communist China, details of the private lives of the leaders were guarded as state secrets. But every Chinese knew that the Party leaders lived in spacious mansions with many servants, obtained their provisions from special shops where luxury goods were made available to their household at nominal prices, and send their children in chauffeur-driven cars to exclusive schools to be taught by specially selected teachers. Even though every Chinese knew how these leaders lived, no one dared to talk about it. If we had to pass by a special shop for the military or high officials, we carefully looked the other way to avoid giving the impression we knew it was there. Pg. 90

~ Nien Cheng

I came to the state twenty years ago from the South, the gothic South. I’ve heard it called that, haven’t you, Mister Morgan? ‘Thought I was gettin’ away from all that. You know, the Tennessee Williams’ decadence, the Huey Long corruption, the brewin’ and simmerin’ violence. I actually found that I kind of missed it. Then, I found out it was all here, too, but without the charm.

~ Jackson Burnett

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

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

~ Immortal Technique

My mind mends my motives and my notion navigates my natives,for we all are made of soil-our corrupted soil.

~ Munia Khan

Love corrupts and absolute love corrupts absolutely. The unreasonable systems of men, that is.

~ Silvia Hartmann

Get into Parliament, make tiresome speeches; you will have great offers; do not accept them at first, then do: then make great provision for yourself and family, and then call yourself an independent country gentleman.

~ Hans Stanley

We know we are all tarnished, so we doubt everyone else too. It is sad situation, where we need a leader but cannot really trust anyone.

~ Chetan Bhagat

Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?

~ Oscar Wilde

Loyalty in the legal world is distorting its own peculiar sense of reality. Loyalty is the legal world's gravity: it holds that world together; it is omnipotent; it cannot be seen but its effects are observable; it can be a powerful force of destruction. As it grows stronger and more powerful, one can only hope such a strange world will be ultimately crushed by its own “weight.

~ Thekeyauthor

Rather to my surprise, I found myself genuinely indignant at the suggestion that murder was to be reintroduced as a means of political advancement for the first time since the Tudors, and even more indignant that the legal and political establishments in all their forms - which included, at that stage, the police - were going to cover up the whole episode. In the event, it turned out that my anxieties were unfounded, as Thorpe was totally innocent of all charges brought against him.

~ Auberon Waugh

In all cities, the better classes - the business men - are the sources of corruption, but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes.

~ Lincoln Steffens

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

~ Amos Bronson Alcott

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

~ John F. Kennedy

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

The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives - everything you need for a great sports drama.

~ Asif Kapadia

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

~ Peter Ustinov

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

~ Jacob Bronowski

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

~ David Hume

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

~ Joe Biden

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

This is about systemic, institutional corruption, not personality. To ask the Democratic leadership to clean things up would be like asking the old Soviet bureaucracy under Brezhnev to reform itself. It ain't going to happen.

~ Newt Gingrich

We think our leadership has been too timid to go after corruption, and often times, they bow to the liberal progressive demands of the White House instead of standing up for our values.

~ John Fleming

When I saw corruption, I was forced to find truth on my own. I couldn't swallow the hypocrisy.

~ Barry White

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

~ Jim Hightower

Scandals, corruption, partisan infighting - no wonder people have lost faith in Congress. I say enough is enough.

~ Joe Garcia

If you have faith in the public sector, as I do, you must be the harshest critic of corruption, waste and fraud in government.

~ Eric Schneiderman

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

I would like to end world hunger and create world peace, stop corruption, stop drugs getting to kids.

~ Kelly Preston

Corruption, the greatest single bane of our society today.

~ Olusegun Obasanjo

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

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

~ Georges Bernanos

There's been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that's already legal, you'll never get it.

~ Travis Kalanick