corruption Quotes

You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator.

Laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.

“But whilst man takes delight in this honest and lawful pursuit of his wellbeing, it is to be apprehended that he may in the end lose the use of his sublimest faculties; and that whilst he is busied in improving all around him, he may at length degrade himself.”

“Slavery, as we shall afterwards show, dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity of man.”

“The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.”

“Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.”

“The private citizen, who employs the most immoral practices to acquire power, can only act in a manner indirectly prejudicial to the public prosperity. But if the representative of the executive descends into the combat, the cares of government dwindle into second-rate importance, and the success of his election is his first concern. All laws and all the negotiations he undertakes are to him nothing more than electioneering schemes; places become the reward of services rendered, not to the nation, but to its chief; and the influence of the government, if not injurious to the country, is at least no longer beneficial to the community for which it was created.”

“Taking a bribe, letting yourself be bought off, accepting flattery in exchange for some sort of loyalty, is sabotage. Refusing to confront an issue because if you keep quiet you’ll get a promotion or be made an elder or keep your job corrupts you down deep.”

“George: Godly money ripped from the golden teeth of the unfaithful, a pragmatic extension of the big dream.”

“Do not fear the thorns in your path, for they draw only the corrupt blood.”

“The puritanical, conservative value system of America was stifling after the soldiers’ experience in Europe. At the same time, corruption at all levels of government was commonplace.”

“Miraz weeded them out. Belisar and Uvilas were shot with arrows on a hunting party: by chance, it was pretended. All the great house of the Passarids he sent to fight giants on the northern frontier till one by one they fell.”

“The corruption of the heart of man is ... immoderate and boundless in its fury ... it is like fire pent up by God’s restraints, when as if it were let loose, it would set on fire the course of nature; and as the heart is now a sink of sin, so, if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone.”

“He doesn’t know what the truth means, so he does not even know how he lies. ”

“He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn’t owe too much money.”

“He’s got friends in town, or he wouldn’t be what he is.”

“It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.”

“I have my pipe line into headquarters, or I wouldn’t be here. I get them the way they happen, not the way you read them in the papers.”

“A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.”

“Being a copper I like to see the law win. I’d like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred hard guys that got knocked over on their first caper and never had a break since. That’s what I’d like. You and me both lived too long to think I’m likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don’t run our country that way.”

“Once outside the law you’re all the way outside.”

“The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred and fighting.”

“They were trying to take down a clan, the most ancient and efficient social organization known to man. Didn’t the Americans realize that for every leader they arrested there were dozens of brothers, cousins, sons, and nephews to take his place?”

“Even if the Habr Gidr were somehow crippled or destroyed, wouldn’t that just elevate the next most powerful clan? Or did the Americans expect Somalia to suddenly sprout full-fledged Jeffersonian democracy?”

“The regime got scared because if these opponents had reached Tehran, they would have freed those who represented a real threat to the government…”

“Don’t worry. Everyone who left will come back. They’re just afraid of change.”

“My own corruption is violent, tumultuous, enticing, and entangling. As it conceives sin, it wars within me and against me.”

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”

“Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his ‘influence’ in your behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in Washington.”

“But there was nothing dulce et decorum about the Dervish dead. Nothing of the dignity of unconquerable manhood. All was filthy corruption. Yet these were as brave men as ever walked the earth. ”

“There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor.”

“Where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green...”

“Have you ever wondered why it is that all we seemed to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants? You will have to accept that this is mostly your fault.”

“If you were to ask why you would be told that the banks are encouraged by the government to make loans available for cars, but loans for houses not so easily available.”

“People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”

“What matters really, not only to me, but to officers of justice and the king, is that an innocent man should languish in prison, the victim of an infamous denunciation, to die here cursing his executioners.”

“Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is! You have gone from corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In doing what I am going to do—what you force me to do—it is not of your life that I am thinking.”