Top 975 Corrupt Quotes & Sayings

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!

Most people would assume, as I do, that the courtroom is a place for the truth, but it's not with our corrupt judges today - and I'm talking about the corrupt ones on the court of appeals.

Anyone in a position of power is either corrupt or assumed to be corrupt, and the assumption of corruption is as bad as the reality of it.

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

I am a patriot. I have always sought to serve my country, in theory a Republic. Learning that secrecy was evil rather than good was my first step. From there it was a steady march toward open-source everything. Now I see all the evil that secrecy enables in a corrupt Congress, a corrupt Executive, a corrupt economy, and a corrupt society. I see that the greatest service I or any other person can render to the Republic is to march firmly, non-violently, toward open-source everything.

My movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt - now, when I say "corrupt," I'm talking about totally corrupt - political establishment, with a new government controlled by you, the American people.

Power is supposed to be so corrupt. I don't think it's so much corrupt, in the usual sense of the word, as stupid and unrealistic. The more power a person has, the further he gets from reality.

Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man.

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.

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

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

When you have a prime minister who is corrupt, then you can be sure that a country cannot be anything else but corrupt.

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.

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

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.

You can rule ignorance; you can manipulate the illiterate; you can do whatever you want when a people are uneducated, so that goes in line with corrupt business and corrupt politics.

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.

The illegitimate money made by corrupt public servants and the power that it gives them is then also used to perpetuate them in office. This corrupt money is one of the main factors responsible for the continued reelection of such politicians. They become masters of the people they are supposed to serve.

The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.

...to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

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

The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.

A corrupt judiciary is hardly likely to hold a corrupt executive to account.

We're in this amazing frontier of transparency. WikiLeaks. Edward Snowden. 'Westworld' is reflecting that with these robots gaining consciousness. Them coming into consciousness is almost like us, human beings, coming into the truth of the fact that government is corrupt. Police are corrupt. Banks are corrupt. Etcetera, etcetera.

Behind every corrupt politician are 10-20 corrupt businessmen.

The communists have tried to corrupt our education system. They've tried to corrupt any number of institutions. Why wouldn't they try to corrupt the Catholic Church? It is a big enemy.

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

The Republicans are 90% corrupt, and the Democrats are 50% corrupt.

Corrupt seeds bring forth corrupt plants.

In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have political power, to corrupt them.

The impression of Pakistan is that people are corrupt. I don't think they are as corrupt as they are made out to be. I can look you in the eye and tell you I've never bribed anybody.

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.

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.

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

Those is power being largely corrupt, recognize that a non functional and corrupt judiciary will allow them to escape punishment even when they get caught.

If you cloned JFK and Abraham Lincoln and made them president it wouldn't matter. Our system is just too corrupt and too broken. I think that science is corrupt and broken. I think health and nutrition. I think the economic systems, the international relations, the environment, everything, the engines of everything are broken.

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.

Power doesn't corrupt. It's neutral. Someone always wants to corrupt power. It's the way a shotgun is not a deadly weapon until someone chooses to use it irrationally.

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.

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.

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?

The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.

The Republicans I've been talking to have said, 'Oh, the public is cynical about indictments, they happen so often.' Well, that's whistling past the graveyard, because the average voter is only going to remember that one of the big Republican head honchos in Congress was indicted. They won't remember the name or position, but they'll remember it says Congress is corrupt and maybe the majority party is corrupt.

We have to change the system. The system is very rotten. The executive is corrupt, the Congress is corrupt, the judiciary is corrupt. ... So what's left We really have to have a radical and surgical change to bring back the image of our country.

They call me corrupt, frivolous. I am not at all privileged. Maybe the only privileged thing is my face. And corrupt? God! I would not look like this if I am corrupt. Some ugliness would settle down on my system.

It is supposed that power corrupts,' the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. "yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or perceived, a lack of power can also corrupt.

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.

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.'

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

When you show a corrupt police officer in a film, you don't mean that all policemen are corrupt. You just point to the fact that there is corruption in the system.

The thing I love so much about the UN, is that they're so obviously corrupt. It's not like the Oil-for-Food scandal was even hard to discover, it was almost a parody of corruption. The behavior of the delegates in New York is comically corrupt as well. The amazing thing is that there are still people who want to give the UN MORE power, and to become a real world government... Sigh

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

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.

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.'

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.

In India, the corrupt accuse the corrupt of being corrupt and the corrupt investigate the corrupt and absolve the corrupt of being corrupt.

Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.

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.

Fascism was little more than terrorist rule by corrupt gangsters. Mussolini was not corrupt himself but he did nothing except to rage impotently.

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.