Political Corruption Quotes

You can't take money from the taxpayers out of the treasury to give it to pay off your political donors. That's corruption to do that. ~ Michele Bachmann

The distinctive crimes of this generation are crimes of subtlety and finesse.
- ALEXANDER S. BACON 1908 ~ J.M. Carlisle

Then, as they began to decline, they all experienced some peculiar similarities: an inordinate emphasis on sports and entertainment, a fixation with lifestyles of the rich and famous, political corruption, and the loss of a moral compass. ~ Ben Carson

Brazil has a lot of issues that are similar to a lot of countries in Latin America, but the dominant issue Brazil is dealing with is poverty and political corruption. ~ Morena Baccarin

We hit slavery through a great civil war. Did we destroy it? No, we only changed it into hatred between sections of the country: in the South, into political corruption and chicanery, the degradation of the blacks through peonage, unjust laws, unfair and cruel treatment; and the degradation of the whites by their resorting to these practices, the paralyzation of the public conscience, and the ever over-hanging dread of what the future may bring. ~ James Weldon Johnson

Both political parties have a richly vested interest in corporate corruption. ~ Arianna Huffington

A less well known impact of immigrant populations is the increase that destination states gain in Congress where apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives is calculated on the basis of a state's entire adult population regardless of legal status. And, because each state's electoral college vote is the sum of the number of its representatives in the House and its two senators, high immigration states play a larger role in presidential elections than they might if only adult citizens and legal aliens were counted in population surveys. ~ Edward S. Greenberg

In order to be the master, the politician poses as the servant. ~ Charles De Gaulle

Ex-Im is the lowest of low-hanging fruit in the sprawling tree of American political corruption. And yet House Republicans cannot seem to pluck it. ~ Anonymous

When I retired and told my wife I wanted to go back to Bozeman and fight political corruption and get involved in politics, she decided to stay in Seattle. ~ Stan Jones

Political corruption, social greed, and Americanized quasi-socialism can ruin even the most wonderful places. California proved that. ~ Tiffany Madison

Corruption.
like anything it is systematic, and without a level of corruption ost societies would seize up, the levels of accepted/expected political corruption don't even raise eyebrows anymore, especially when it runs parallel to our economic systems, so I guess we are stuck with it. ~ Steve Merrick

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as [inherently] exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal. ~ Vladimir Putin

What did "good government" really mean? Langlie and his brotherhood promised an end to political corruption. (There's no evidence that Langlie ever even took a drink, much less a bribe.) The days of "honest graft" were over, at least for a while. But seen from another perspective - that of ordinary citizens without access to Langlie and Abram's elite network - Langlie didn't so much end corruption as legalize it. Langlie wasn't opposed to a government organized around the interests of the greedy; he just didn't want to have to break the law to serve them. ~ Jeff Sharlet

True understanding involves sincere honesty and holistic, deep listening without the political corruption of evil power players. ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my book K.H. trilogy ~ Angelica Hopes

Corporate greed controls political will. ~ Aaron B. Powell

Then there was Buddha meddling in, telling all of the Hindu, Hebrew, Christian and Islamic gods and demons that they were nothing more than unenlightened fear induced figments of nirvana-starved mortals. ~ Andrew James Pritchard

I do not belong to any political party because I am not a party to the wrongs they eventually do. ~ Amit Abraham

Political corruption is to Rhode Islanders as smog is to people who live in Los Angeles: nobody complains of its absence, but when it rolls around everyone feels right at home. ~ Philip Gourevitch

One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption. ~ Upton Sinclair

Cry Wolf' is a hard-boiled thriller written at break-neck pace of political corruption and organised, very violent crime. ~ Mike Ripley

I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level. ~ Ayad Akhtar

Without causality in the world, there is no point in educating people, or making any moral or political appeal. ~ Felix Alba-Juez

Acharya, is war the only solution to political differences?' 'Wise pupil, politics is war without bloodshed and war is simply politics with bloodshed. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

The rise of a hypersexual culture is not proof that we have reached full equality; rather, it has reflected and exaggerated the deeper imbalances of power in our society. Without thoroughgoing economic and political change, what we see when we look around us is not the equality we once sought; it is a stalled revolution. ~ Natasha Walter

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The career world is like an ecological system: People occupy particular fields within which they must compete for resources and survival. The more people there are crowded into a space, the harder it becomes to thrive there. Working in such a field will tend to wear you out as you struggle to get attention, to play the political games, to win scarce resources for yourself. You spend so much time at these games that you have little time left over for true mastery. You are seduced into such fields because you see others there making a living, treading the familiar path. You are not aware of how difficult such a life can be. ~ Robert Greene

The triviality of American popular culture, its emptiness and gossip, accelerates this destruction of critical thought. It expands the void, the mindlessness that makes the magic, mythology, and irrationality of the Christian Right palatable. Television, the movement's primary medium, allows viewers to preoccupy themselves with context-free information. The homogenized empty chatter on the airwaves, the banal amusement and clichés, the bizarre doublespeak endlessly repeated on cable news channels and the huge spectacles in sports stadiums have replaced America's political, social and moral life, indeed replaced community itself. Television lends itself perfectly to this world of signs and wonders, to the narcissism of national and religious self-exaltation. Television discourages real communication. Its rapid frames and movements, its constant use of emotional images, its sudden shifts from one theme to an unrelated theme, banish logic and reason with dizzying perplexity. It, too, makes us feel good. It, too, promises to protect and serve us. It, too, promises to life us up and thrill us. The televangelists have built their movement on these commercial precepts. The totalitarian creed of the Religious Right has found in television the perfect medium. Its leaders know how television can be used to seduce and encourage us to walk away from dwindling, less exciting collectives that protect and nurture us. They have mastered television's imperceptible, slowly induced hypnosis. An ~ Chris Hedges

As a Coalition Government, we inherited a legacy of lack of trust and confidence in political system. ~ Andrew Lansley

A leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader. ~ Suzy Kassem

In Bangladesh, if you put a kiss in a film, it's political. ~ Sarah Gavron

Democracy is fine in politics. It should stay there, and we need more of it. But its political virture is no reason to practice it in the garden. ~ Allen Lacy

I am willing to compete on my merits and on my character - not with the color of my skin. We talk about being a color-blind society, but I don't think the political process could actually handle that. ~ J. C. Watts

As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways ... socialism is a new form of slavery. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse. ~ John Lewis

When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. ~ Barack Obama

Political art - not always a contradiction in terms - can destroy institutions, or eat away at them. ~ Joe Haldeman

Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things. In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

We, as a nation, are slowly losing our grasp on what it means to be free to speak up ... then the Emperor is stark naked ... ~ Susan LeDoux

European nation with highest politician/lover ratio: Few European states can hope to compete with France and Italy in this department, and the two nations have been battling for European political lothario supremacy for over thirty years. The contest has been increasingly acrimonious since 1998, when France was initially the clear winner but somehow "lost" sixty-eight illicit lovers in the recount and had to concede defeat. The following year was no less rocked in scandal, when the Italians were disqualified for "stretching the boundaries" of their elected representatives to include senior civil servants - and the crown was tossed back to France. No one was quite prepared for the disgraceful scandal the following year when it was discovered that one French minister had no mistress at all and "loved his wife," a shocking revelation that led to his resignation and ultimately to the fall of the government. ~ Jasper Fforde

Monti is a person who is an expert on both the political and professional level. ~ Mark Rutte

I think there is a scientific approach to it and there is a political approach to it and an economical approach to it. All of this combined, we might find a solution. ~ Veronika Varekova

As a Christian, I'm passionately opposed to American pretensions that we have special standing with God; to political office-seekers who play on our religious differences; and to the religious arrogance that says, 'Our truth is the only truth.' ~ Parker Palmer

Totalitarian politics - far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist - use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their strength and their propaganda value - the reality of class struggle, for instance, or the interest conflicts between Jews and their neighbors - have all but disappeared. ~ Hannah Arendt

We must never violate principles. We must never initiate violence. And we should never harm the innocent. But at some point, unless governments back off, we have to stop being nice. ~ Claire Wolfe

Coal mining is an industry rife with mismanagement, corruption, greed and an almost blatant disregard for the safety, health and quality of life of its work force. Everyone knows this. Everyone has always known it. ~ Tawni O'Dell

Faithfulness works itself out in the context of complex social, political, economic, and cultural forces that prevail at a particular time and place. ~ James Davison Hunter

Nature knows no political frontiers. She begins by establishing life on this globe and then watches the free play of forces. Those who show the greatest courage and industry are the children nearest to her heart, and they will be granted the sovereign right of existence. ~ Adolf Hitler

Totalitarian rule thrives on its subjects' ignorance of the extent to which the surveillance system is monitoring their lives. The possibility, rather than the fact, of surveillance is enough to generate fear, anxiety, and informal pressures to conform, to downplay dissenting opinions, to declare one's absolute loyalty. Thus an enforced culture of self-censorship emerges in communities that used to express their political opinions freely. ~ Arun Kundnani

I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it. ~ Randa Abdel-Fattah

Professional politicians like to talk about the value of experience in government. Nuts! The only experience you gain in politics is how to be political. ~ Ronald Reagan

My argument would be that I don't think there is much that's genuinely political art that is good art. ~ Thom Yorke

One insult pocketed soon produces another. ~ Thomas Jefferson

When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education ... the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint ... It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold ... they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Writing fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums ... From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to The Little Mermaid, no work of the imagination is truly apolitical, because the world and our hopes for it are always part of our stories. ~ John Green

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The GOP's thirst for confrontation and crisis is symptomatic of a destructive and nihilistic streak that has overtaken our political system. When one party repudiates the whole concept of compromise, it is inevitable that the government will lurch from one crisis to another. ~ Mike Lofgren

I hope the Icelandic government grants me political asylum. ~ Bobby Fischer

Far left and far right, where is the body that holds them? ~ "Beta" Metani' Marashi

We pick politicians by how they look on TV and Miss America on where she stands on the issues. Isn't that a little backwards? ~ Jay Leno

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference. ~ Thomas Jefferson

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 will work in partnership with the Government, all political parties, and civil society to safeguard and advance the future of all Singaporeans. ~ Tony Tan

It's always amusing to see how much less the political class knows than the rest of us do ... it's never occurred to [the likes of Senators Brownback and Obama] that they bear a worse stigma than any AIDS patient, being almost universally regarded as blowhards, crooks, dopes, and fools. ~ Stephen D. Cox