Top 1200 Corrupt Power Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

We've seen over time that countries that have the best economic growth are those that have good governance, and good governance comes from freedom of communication. It comes from ending corruption. It comes from a populace that can go online and say, 'This politician is corrupt, this administrator, or this public official is corrupt.'

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

Sometime in the not too distant future, denying gays the right to marry will be viewed as historically corrupt - as corrupt as denying slaves their freedom.

We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.

In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.

The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.

Our world is very dishonest, and our leaders encourage dishonesty by setting bad examples - by lying, being corrupt, and using political sleight of hand to sustain power.

America's political system is superior to the crony corrupt corrupt capital system in Russia in every way.

I don't have my finger on the pulse of corruption in China, but I think most people on the ground would say that as China was emerging from communism, it was a very regulated society, and therefore, it was very corrupt. But as they have deregulated the economy, there just aren't as many opportunities for people to be corrupt.

The central base of world political power is right here in America, and it is our corrupt political establishment that is the greatest power behind the efforts at radical globalization and the disenfranchisement of working people. Their financial resources are virtually unlimited, their political resources are unlimited, their media resources are unmatched, and most importantly, the depths of their immorality is absolutely unlimited. They will allow radical Islamic terrorists to enter our country by the thousands.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expense to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us.

The United States must look beyond Mr. Putin. His regime may appear imposing, but it is rotting inside. His Russia is not a great power on par with America. It is a gas station run by a corrupt, autocratic regime.

He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. There was only one thing that power could not do: it could not make him able to smell himself.

It might take an act of God to convince some Americans that parts of their government are corrupt, but at the same time, you cannot, under any circumstances, persuade an Iranian that his government is not corrupt!

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.

That's not to say they [Bill and Hillary Clinton] intend to be corrupt, but I think they're way too cozy with the economic elite, and we know that our political system exemplifies the power of the economic elite.

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

If the problem is Washington is corrupt, why on Earth would you want to give more power to Washington?

So in a strange way, even though Trump is a billionaire, what he's been saying is, "Everything's rigged, it's all corrupt and I'm not corrupt because I'm my own billionaire." Both [Donald] Trump and Bernie Sanders made a lot of hay by making that argument.

When a few people control the bulk of money, they can not only influence elections by money power - which enables various forms of advertising and propaganda campaigns - they can also corrupt and misuse all institutions of the state to influence elections.

If people want to get into leadership through corrupt practices, through corrupt means, I think that's detestable; we have to take action.

The Founding Fathers were truly some of the most gifted thinkers in history. They understood that power could be used to corrupt.

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

Somebody asked me the question not too long ago: 'Dave, do you think the music business has turned corrupt.' I said: 'Absolutely not - it has always been corrupt.'

Our party is the upcoming alternative force in Tamil Nadu and both the ruling AIADMK and DMK are corrupt and both parties used money power to woo voters during Srirangam bypolls.

What happens when you get any kind of entrenched power is that it just becomes kind of corrupt and self-serving.

Probably in all history there is no instance of a society in which ecclesiastical power was dominant which was not at once stagnant, corrupt and brutal.

We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends -- the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.

Well i know that my company is not corrupt or unfair because i got all this with all my hard work. I see no reason why you say my company was corrupt may you explain to me miss [Ida] Tarbell.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.

I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system. It's corrupt in many ways, in that scientists and academics have handed over to the editors of these journals the ability to make judgment on science and scientists.

If you think Hollywood is depressing and corrupt, politics is really depressing and corrupt -- and fueled even more than Hollywood by money -- if that's possible.

Black Power is a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can't win... the view that American society is so hopelessly corrupt and enmeshed in evil that there is no possibility of salvation from within.

The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people... The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.

Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

When people who are seeking change start out, they are driven by commitment to a cause. But as internecine power struggles take over, one-time idealists fall prey to corruption. They become just as corrupt and manipulative as the system that they want to overthrow.

Intention is the measure for rendering actions true, so that, where intention is sound, action is sound, and where it is corrupt, then action is corrupt

The predominant teachings of this age are that there are no limits to man's capacity to govern others and that, therefore, no limitations ought to be imposed upon government. The older faith, born of long ages of suffering under man's dominion over man, was that the exercise of unlimited power by men with limited minds and self-regarding prejudices is soon oppressive, reactionary, and corrupt. The older faith taught that the very condition of progress was the limitation of power to the capacity and the virtue of rulers.

Love is power, the purest power and the greatest power: Love is God. Nothing can be higher than that. But this power is not a desire to enslave others, this power is not a destructive force. This power is the very source of creation. This power is creativity. And this power will transform you totally into a new being. It has no concern with anybody. Its whole concern is to bring your seeds to their ultimate flowering.

The old Catholic church traditions are worth more than all you have said. Here is a principle of logic that most men have no more sense than to adopt. I will illustrate it by an old apple tree. Here jumps off a branch and says, I am the true tree, and you are corrupt. If the whole tree is corrupt, are not its branches corrupt? If the Catholic religion is a false religion, how can any true religion come out of it? If the Catholic church is bad, how can any good thing come out of it?

Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within. Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a consuming disease.

Whenever there is money, power, and titles involved, players are going to be corrupt. That might be a political statement, but that's what it is for the athletes, too.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.

There are some power-abusing, corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth.

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized.

My view of civilization is that there have always been small pockets of good, decent, kind people surrounded by corrupt and evil power structures. It's always a battle to stay on the side of good.

We don't have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

We see the corrupt prison system, we see the corrupt police system, we see the corruption in the government, from the top on down. You know, it's built based on lies. However, the marijuana industry itself, because it was an underground industry, showed us the way we could exist on this planet.

Many Americans have been looking for an explanation for Mr. Trump's apparent adoration of Mr. Putin. How can a powerful, wealthy American man hold affection for the tyrannical, corrupt leader of a hostile power?

I know the way this city works. We have one of the most corrupt cities in the country. The reason it's so corrupt is because everybody thinks it's honest, and it's not. You know the truth when you go to Chicago. The difference here in Los Angeles is you believe it's honest - and that's dangerous.

It has been said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but many it not be truer to say that to be absolutely powerful a man must first corrupt himself?

Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric, just as a contradiction can corrupt a system of logic, allowing falsehoods to proliferate through it.

Serving democracy and nourishing the common good is, for the media, something that requires not only attacking corrupt secrecies in a society, but also defending non-corrupt communication.

To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.

Back in the 1950s, America set out to intervene in Syria, liberate the people from a corrupt elite, and bring about a new democracy. They did this with the best of intentions, but it led to disaster. And out of that disaster, the Assad regime rose to power.

The Clintons engage routinely in corrupt practices, mixing their political power with their nonprofit work to make themselves rich, while not standing up for the little guy.

After all that corrupt poets, and more corrupt philosophers, have told us of the blandishments of pleasure, and of its tendency to soften the temper and humanize the affections, it is certain, that nothing hardens the heart like excessive and unbounded luxury; and he who refuses the fewest gratifications to his own voluptuousness, will generally be found the least susceptible of tenderness for the wants of others.