Quotes about 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

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

— Edmund Burke

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

I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect -- it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman.

— Graham Greene

I am against government by crony.

— Harold L. Ickes

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

Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.

— Walter Lippmann

The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted.

— John Lyly

The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.

— Bess Myerson

When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will.

— William Shakespeare

The jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

— Henry David Thoreau

When I want to buy up any politician I always find the anti-monopolists the most purchasable -- they don't come so high.

— William Vanderbilt

It’s totally corrupt man.

— James Dye

The bad apples are at the top. They enjoy murdering the innocent people.

— James Dye

An uncorrupted individual in a corrupted system will finally end up being corrupted himself except and unless he is constantly fighting against the corruption.

— Jhurry Muhummad Anas