(730 quotes found)
“In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established”
Algernon Sidney
“each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
“In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.”
Publius Cornelius Tacitus
“Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.”
Joseph P. Kennedy
“Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.”
Edmund Burke
“No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.”
Jacob Bronowski
“Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.”
Charles Caleb Colton
“Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.”
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek
“Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.”
Peter Ustinov
