Top 215 Corrupt Quotes

Power tends to corrupt – so we should, in both the public and the private spheres, be on guard against, and erect sturdy guardrails against, the corruptions of power.

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.

Self-deception is so far from impossible that it is one of the most ordinary phenomena with which we are acquainted. Nothing is more usual than for a man to impute his actions to honorable motives when it is nearly demonstrable that they flowed from some corrupt and contemptible force.

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

Nigeria, with the oil sector, had the reputation of being corrupt and not managing its own public finances well. So what did we try to do? We introduced a fiscal rule that de-linked our budget from the oil price.

Its easy to view politicians as corrupt and voting essentially an act of picking the lesser of two evils. I understand that perspective and feel it’s valid.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.

Personally, I have never considered myself corrupt or seen the need to be so. People are judged as what they are perceived to be.

Democrats don’t react the same way Republicans do, because they are not forced to react the same way Republicans are forced to react. They get to be as corrupt as, basically, they want, and just ignore it.

Obstruction of justice requires a corrupt intent.

I think there is a case for strong action and intervention when there is criminality and when the leaders are corrupt or behaving in a criminal fashion.

Compared to Congress, BJP is spending huge money in the elections. BJP keeps claiming that it is not corrupt. Then where is it getting such huge monies from?

Many original occupiers believe the political system has become so corrupt that even participating in it, engaging with it, corrupts the movement. I understand what they are saying. But often, change does come more quickly from the inside rather than the outside. My advice: try both. But don’t try violence.

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 novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all – in the end the vast majority of them simply aren’t that great, and are destined to be forgotten.

I think most of our religious institutions are pretty corrupt, so they’re not reliable. I think the Christian religion that I was brought up with has very little to do with Christ, really, and more an institutions that have built up around the church.

Voters definitely believe Washington is corrupt – but most think it’s bipartisan.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil’s alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

New Orleans reminds me of Romania because New Orleans is very corrupt politically.

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.

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.

I think there should be a law that would allow the Oireachtas to take pensions away from people. That would go for corrupt politicians; it would go for public servants who failed miserably or were incompetent.

You have to live. I cannot say you cut off your income and become corrupt.

Port Royal, Jamaica, was built for pirates. The town had a well-protected harbor, corrupt politicians and townsfolk, and a set of ethics that seemed passed down from Sodom and Gomorrah.

I think that at his core, Benjamin Netanyahu is not corrupt.

Let me make something clear: There are very few things Hollywood is right about. This is a very corrupt, elitist industry that breeds favoritism and fails people up the career ladder.

Like most people who live in India, I complain about corruption, but know that I can live with corrupt men. It is the honest ones I secretly worry about.

People do not want politicians they know to be corrupt.

That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt.

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

Corruption and illicit financial flows are different. But they really must be twinned. This is because, for practical purposes, it is an eminently more sensible approach to treat most of the sources of illicit financial flows as corrupt activity, within a broader use of the term.

Chicago is known for good steaks, expensive stores and beautiful architecture. Unfortunately, the Windy City also enjoys a reputation for corrupt politics, violent crime, and some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere in the country.

People endure what they endure and they deal with it. It may corrupt them. It may lead them into all sorts of compensatory excesses.

We are fighting the communal BJP on the one hand and the corrupt Congress on the other.

In Uzbekistan, hundreds of protesters were recently killed under the corrupt regime of President Karimov in what human rights groups are calling a massacre.

In a way, I think the whole business is pretty corrupt. It’s like anything else where people make a lot of money – it’s really hard for the little guy.

Men and women of character raise strong children who are not easily influenced by the media, corrupt schools, bad friends, and the outside world.

The Chinese countryside has become a slave labour camp and dumping ground for every imaginable pollutant. The rural peasantry is being sucked dry by corrupt government tax collectors.

If we go back to the birth of ‘Superman’ and ‘Batman’ in America in the ’30s, they were created because of events like the Great Depression, crime and Al Capone, among others. Everybody was corrupt back then, and if you can’t have a hero in real life, it helps to have one in your fantasies.

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty.

Corrupt bureaucrats and cops ought to dismissed or compulsorily retired from service, as they are a drain on the service. Their performance must be vigorously assessed.

Many Americans have sensed there is a very corrupt pay-to-play system going on in Washington.

Some on the Left can be very selective about the kinds of violence they oppose. For some of them, gun violence is a crime to be decried – unless it is committed by an ‘aggrieved’ victim against what they consider a corrupt institution.

Veganism is a point of contention all year round. So much so that many vegans cut themselves off from the rest of society, huddling together for warmth and smugness, and using online forums to vent their disgust at the morally corrupt dairy- and meat-eating savages who make up most of the populace.

I’m proud to have played a major part in destroying Fleet Street, a corrupt cartel of unions and proprietors that operated against the public interest.

In movies, we’ve run out of ideas for bad guys. We end up with politically incorrect villains, like Arab terrorists or Latin drug dealers or corrupt politicians. Well, aliens are the best film villains since the Nazis. You don’t have to worry about offending anyone.

Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything – it can stop the Vietnam War, it can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.

No wonder we have a lot of violence in Rio: the corrupt and violent policemen meet the violent criminals in the streets. What else is going to happen?

We are pleased to dismiss politics as entirely corrupt, if not financially, intellectually.

Even as the whole world tries to hang on to its job, there is also this weird parallel sense – almost a covert longing – that the old corrupt structures on which that job depends needs to be, ought to be, swept away.

Trayvon Martin was the product of a broken home. He was also a victim of the corrupt civil-right leaders who peddle racism infecting the minds of young blacks.

In order for New York to not only get back to where we were, but to finally fulfill our potential as the greatest city on Earth, we need people in charge who are going to fight for the working class, and not the corrupt institutions that have taken advantage of a broken system.

When I look at Washington today, we need to bring us together. We need to solve problems, we need to rebuild our military so we can stand up to radical Islam, we need to get our economy growing much faster by throwing out the corrupt tax code and lowering the rates.