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Corruption Quotes

Browse 1954 quotes about Corruption.

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Corruption Quotes

“Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history.”

WarReligionJesusBloodTraditionCorruptionOppressionMuhammadCulturesRevolutionaries
Book:Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries
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“When national ideals are confined to insignificant issues reflective primarily of a personal choice, there lies a problem of distorted priorities.”

Inspirational QuotesPoliticsFreedomSelf EsteemExperienceCorruptionPersonal DevelopmentPrioritiesSelfishnessMaking A DifferencePatriotismNationalismDecision MakingIdealismNational SecurityPoliticiansPolitical PhilosophyPersonal ResponsibilityPolitical CorrectnessDistortionFreedom Of ChoiceChoices And ConsequencesReflectionsGovernment CorruptionChoice QuotesCorruption PoliticsGlobal CommunityRole PlayingRole Of GovernmentDecisions InspirationalPriorities QuotesPersonal PlanningPrioritizing Your GoalsConfiningProblems Of TodayPrimaryIdeals QuotesAwareness Of GuiltDistorted ThoughtsIssue Importance
Author:Moutasem Algharati
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“I must have had some high object in life, for I feel unbounded strength within me. But I never discovered it and was carried away by the allurements of empty, un-rewarding passions. I was tempered in their flames and came out cold and hard as steel, but I'd lost forever that fire of noble endeavour, that finest flower of life. How many time since then have I been an axe in the hands of fate? Like an engine of execution, I've descended on the heads of the condemned, often without malice, but always without pity. My love has brought no one happiness, for I've never sacrificed a thing for those I've loved. I've loved for myself, for my own pleasure, I've only tried to satisfy a strange inner need. I've fed on their feelings, love, joys and sufferings, and always wanted more. I'm like a starving man who falls asleep exhausted and sees rich food and sparkling wines before him. He rapturously falls on these phantom gifts of the imagination and feels better, but the moment he wakes up his dream disappears and he's left more hungry and desperate than before.”

CorruptionUnhappinessRestlessnessInsatiability
Book:A Hero of Our Time
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“Most of us are suffering from fake selective outrage . We choose to be angry at the people and not being angry at the problem. We choose to be angry at a person, because we hate the person. We don’t care about the problem they caused or crime they committed. If we love the person, then we choose to ignore the problem or crime they committed. Well, all the bad things you choose to ignore don’t go away. They will come back to you.”

ProblemWisdomChoicesCorruptionChooseQuotes And PhilosophySelectivePeople Or Human BehaviorCrime Or CriminalsActivist Or Feminism
Author:De philosopher DJ Kyos
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“Today we are suffering because those who know better choose not to entertain politics and those who don’t know. The ones without integrity choose to sing the tune and praises of the one who gives them money, who feeds them or who promised to give them something. They see corruption as connections. Oppositions as spies, agencies, puppet masters, proxies, sellouts, stogies or clever blacks. Accountability to them means they are being targeted and hated. They choose to see themselves and those they support as victims when they must answer for their crimes or wrongdoings.”

ChoicesPoliticsMotivational QuotesHistoryVictimCorruptionEncouragement QuotesChooseElectionsQuotes And Philosophy
Author:De philosopher DJ Kyos
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“We used to have this self-centred idea that Western democracies were the end-point of evolution, and we're dealing from a position of strength, and people are becoming like us. It's not that way. Because if you think this thing we have here isn't fragile you are kidding yourself. This, '- and here Jamison takes a breath and waves his hand around to denote Maida Vale, London, the whole of Western civilization, -'this is fragile.”

CorruptionNostalgiaColonialism
Book:Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
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“Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject.”

PowerSocietyCorruptionOwsNinety Nine Percent
Book:Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
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“The Devil's Chapel by Stewart Stafford Spires writhing in audacity's sky, Laced masonry's Faustian high, The Devil's Chapel invites by lie, Embalmed, a cracked stone altar dry. The golden Madonna rises above all, Lucifer's War, in stained glass, tall, In horned shadow, the angelic fall, Dark kingdom formed of a lightning ball. Bartholomew flayed by sadistic chagrin, Bones laid bare, devotion anchored within, Skin in the game took centuries to win, Gargoyles leer in the paying tourist din. Behind the veil of confession wood, The all-seeing eye drips with blood, Trickster's snare in nightmare's flood, A gift shop trades where sacrifice stood. Pungent echoes in incense crawl, Catacombs beckon entombed gall, To witness ornate veneration's pall, Silent to a martyr's last breath call. Croziers rest in chilled silver's display, As pink-veined marble taints today. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

ChristianitySacrificeCorruptionMartyrSocial CommentaryGood Vs EvilChapelDark PoetryGothic HorrorReligious Horror
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“It is easier to blame the politicians and civil servants than to take responsibility for the issues of one's own society. Society is us, so its issues are our responsibility - they are the responsibility of each one of us, from the scientist to the civil servant, from the janitor to the teacher, from the preacher to the sex-worker.”

ActionPoliticalPoliticsSocietyCitizensPoliticianCorruptionSocial ResponsibilitySocial IssuesBe The Change
Book:Mad About Humans: World Maker's Almanac
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“James Madison framed the constitutional order so that power would be in the hands of the Senate, which represents “the wealth of the nation,” the “more capable sett of men,” who have respect for property owners and their rights and understand the need for government “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority”—though it was not long before he came to deplore “the daring depravity of the times,” as the “stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government—at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations” (1792).”

HistoryDemocracyCapitalismCorruptionOppressionInequalityAmerican HistoryAmerican PoliticsRich PeopleJames Madison
Book:Hopes and Prospects
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“Vetinari leaned back and placed his fingers together. ‘Let us consider a situation in which some keen and highly inventive men devise a remarkable system of communication,’ he said. ‘What they have is a kind of passionate ingenuity, in large amounts. What they don’t have is money. They are not used to money. So they meet some . . . people, who introduce them to other people, friendly people, who for, oh, a forty per cent stake in the enterprise give them the much-needed cash and, very important, much fatherly advice and an introduction to a really good firm of accountants. ‘And so they proceed, and soon money is coming in and money is going out but somehow, they learn, they’re not quite as financially stable as they think and really do need more money. Well, this is all fine because it’s clear to all that the basic enterprise is going to be a money tree one day, and does it matter if they sign over another fifteen per cent? It’s just money. It’s not important in the way that shutter mechanisms are, is it? ‘And then they find out that yes, it is. It is everything. Suddenly the world’s turned upside down, suddenly those nice people aren’t so friendly any more, suddenly it turns out that those bits of paper they signed in a hurry, were advised to sign by people who smiled all the time, mean that they don’t actually own anything at all, not patents, not property, nothing. Not even the contents of their own heads, indeed. Even any ideas they have now don’t belong to them, apparently. And somehow they’re still in trouble about money. ‘Well, some run and some hide and some try to fight, which is foolish in the extreme, because it turns out that everything is legal, it really is. Some accept low-level jobs in the enterprise, because one has to live and in any case the enterprise even owns their dreams at night. And yet actual illegality, it would appear, has not taken place. Business is business.’ Lord Vetinari opened his eyes. The men around the table were staring at him.”

BusinessCapitalismGreedCorruptionBetrayalFinanceFraudExploitationTheftCorporatism
Book:Going Postal: A Novel of Discworld – An Ingenious Satire of Government, Technology, and Human Nature
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“The history of mankind," said Dreed, "has been a history of betrayals, the perennial betrayal of the common man by the men he has trusted." "By the men the lazy, haphazard, childish oaf was too wilfully stupid to mistrust," said Bodisham. "The history of mankind from the very beginning has been a history of over-trusted trustees, corrupted by their unchecked opportunities.”

TrustCorruptionBetrayalLeadersHumankind
Book:The Holy Terror
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“The last time that I consciously wrote anything to 'save the honor of the Left', as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it no higher) of Clinton. I used leftist categories to measure him, in other words, and to show how idiotic was the belief that he was a liberal's champion. Again, more leftists than you might think were on my side or in my corner, and the book was published by Verso, which is the publishing arm of the New Left Review. However, if a near-majority of leftists and liberals choose to think that Clinton was the target of a witch-hunt and the victim of 'sexual McCarthyism', an Arkansan Alger Hiss in other words, you become weary of debating on their terms and leave them to make the best of it.”

SexCorruptionDebateLiberalismDelusionCowardiceIdiocyArkansasLeftismWitch HuntMccarthyismBill ClintonImpeachment Of Bill ClintonLewinsky ScandalAlger HissNew Left ReviewVerso Books
Book:Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
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“This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going to become vulnerable to patronage and even corruption. That is why Jacob Zuma's 'polygamy' is his achilles heel.”

PoliticsSexRacismCorruptionBritishBritainSouth AfricaSelf ControlAfricaCivilisationPolygamyPatronageGood GovernanceWestminsterSuperiority Complex2010Jacob ZumaCulture Of Africa
Author:Mark Gevisser
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“At this point I realised what it meant to be a man in India. It meant knowing what one could do and knowing what one could only get done. It meant being able to hold onto two patterns simultaneously. One was methodical, hierarchical, regulated and the outcome depended on fate, chance, kings and desperate men. The other was intuitive, illicit and guaranteed. The trick was to know when to shift between the patterns, to peel the file off a table and give it to a peon, to speak easily of one's cousin the minister or archbishop. I did not think I would ever know what these shifts entailed, and that meant, in essence, that I was never going to grow up.”

AgePoliticsCorruptionBureaucracyBriberyGrow Up
Book:Em and the Big Hoom
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“The standard and completely moronic response of the Soviet-and subsequently of the Russian-authorities to any crisis is to decide that it is in the interests of the population that they should be lied to endlessly. Otherwise, the reasoning goes, people are sure to run out of their homes, rush around in a state of anarchy, set buildings on fire, and kill each other! The truth of the matter is that nothing of that sort has ever happened. In most crises the population is prepared to behave in a rational and disciplined manner, especially if the situation were to be explained to them and they were told what needed to be done. Instead, as I have since seen on a less dramatic scale many times, the first official reaction is invariably to lie. There is no practical benefit to the officials doing so; it is simply a rule: In an awkward situation, lie. Play down the damage, deny everything, bluff. It can all be sorted out later, but right now, at the moment of crisis, officials have no option but to lie, because the imagined idiot population is not yet ready for the truth. In the Chernobyl affair, it is pointless to look for even a scintilla of rationality. God forbid the people should have been told to stay indoors for a week and not go outside unless absolutely necessary. In Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine with a population in the millions, a May Day parade was held just five days after the explosion, for the same propaganda purposes-to pretend that all was well. We know now how these decisions were made. The leaders of the Communist Party, sitting in their offices, wanted foremost to ensure that neither the Soviet people nor-horror of horrors-foreigners should know anything about the atomic disaster. The health of tens of thousands of people was sacrificed in the cause of a grand cover-up that was ridiculous, because the radioactive fallout was so extensive it was registered by laboratories all over the globe.”

CorruptionCoverup
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
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“The Soviet Union was amazingly effective at producing propaganda and telling lies, but what was needed here was the ability to build houses in a hurry, and that it was something it could barely do and certainly couldn't do well.... The question most puzzling even to my ten-year-old self was why the authorities were lying like this when everybody around me knew the truth. What kind of pathetic attempt at deception was this? If you are going to lie, you should at least be expecting to benefit from it in some way. You claim to be sick and you don't have to go to school; that at least makes sense. But what was the point of these lies? Describing the way the Soviet Union worked, Vasily Shukshin, a Russian writer, memorably said, "Lies, lies, lies . . . Lies as redemption, lies as atonement for guilt, lies as a goal achieved, lies as a career, as prosperity, as medals, as an apartment . . . Lies! The whole of Russia was covered with lies, like a scab." An excellent description of the situation. If the Chernobyl disaster had never happened, I would probably have heard less talk of politics. It would certainly have been less personal, and my political views would have been slightly different. But things happened as they did, and many years later, when I was a grown man, I watched the newly appointed acting president of Russia, forty-seven-year-old Vladimir Putin, on television, far from sharing any enthusiasm about the country's new "energetic leader," I kept thinking, He never stops lying, just as it was in my childhood.”

LyingCorruptionDeceitCoverup
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
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