50 Quotes On Corruption

In a world where transparency and integrity often seem overshadowed by greed and power, reflecting on words of wisdom can offer both insight and inspiration. Quotes have the unique power to encapsulate complex issues in a way that resonates deeply, serving as a reminder of the ongoing fight against corruption. Our curated collection of the top 50 quotes on corruption brings together voices from various backgrounds and eras, each contributing a perspective on the pervasive nature of corruption and the enduring human spirit to overcome it. Whether you're seeking motivation for advocacy or a deeper understanding of its impact, these quotes serve as a powerful tool to provoke thought and inspire change.

1. “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” - Edward Gibbon

2. “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” - Mark Twain

3. “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” - Tacitus

4. “Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.” - Thomas Jefferson

5. “Do you know we are being led toSlaughters by placid admirals& that fat slow generals are gettingObscene on young bloodDo you know we are ruled by t.v.” - Jim Morrison

6. “Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.” - Henry Kissinger

7. “A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.” - Theodore Roosevelt

8. “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.” - Ben Affleck

9. “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” - Carl Sagan

10. “The mask of art is the means through which corruption is spread. The mask makes vice seem beautiful, turns squalor and nastiness into glamorous thrill, seduces the onlooker into the game – and leaves him or her with the corpse on his hands.” - Jennifer Birkett

11. “When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.” - Ron Paul

12. “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” - John Steinbeck

13. “I think that God that we have created and allowed to shape our culture through, essentially Christian theology is a pretty villainous creature. I think that one of the things that male patriarchal figure has done is, allowed under it's, his church, his wing, all kinds of corruptions and villainies to grow and fester. In the name of that God terrible wars have been waged, in the name of that God terrible sexism has been allowed to spread. There are children being born all across this world that don't have enough food to eat because that God, at least his church, tells the mothers and fathers that they must procreate at all costs, and to prevent procreation with a condom is in contravention with his laws. Now, I don't believe that God exists. I think that God is creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.” - Clive Barker

14. “Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way.” - Raymond Chandler

15. “O mundo está apodrecendo. A Igreja é corrupta e os reis são fracos. Cabe a nós fazer um mundo novo, amado por Deus, mas para fazê-lo temos de destruir o velho. Temos de tomar o poder e depois dar o poder a Deus. É por isso que estamos lutando.” - Bernard Cornwell

16. “But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.” - Anthony Trollope

17. “Politics: “Poli” a Latin word meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "bloodsucking creatures".” - Myron Fagan

18. “During the 1992 election I concluded as early as my first visit to New Hampshire that Bill Clinton was hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics. I have never had to take any of that back, whereas if you look up what most of my profession was then writing about the beefy, unscrupulous 'New Democrat,' you will be astonished at the quantity of sheer saccharine and drool. Anyway, I kept on about it even after most Republicans had consulted the opinion polls and decided it was a losing proposition, and if you look up the transcript of the eventual Senate trial of the president—only the second impeachment hearing in American history—you will see that the last order of business is a request (voted down) by the Senate majority leader to call Carol and me as witnesses. So I can dare to say that at least I saw it through.” - Christopher Hitchens

19. “Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.” - Mark Gevisser

20. “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.” - Mark Gevisser

21. “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.” - George Orwell

22. “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.” - George Orwell

23. “Political corruption, social greed, and Americanized quasi-socialism can ruin even the most wonderful places. California proved that.” - Tiffany Madison

24. “Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile.'I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might,' he hesitated, 'yes, as we might.'Eastman looked at him sourly. 'Cavenaugh, when you've practiced law in New York for twelve years, you find that people can't go far in any direction, except-' He thrust his forefinger sharply at the floor.'Even in that direction, few people can do anything out of the ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we become personally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man's integrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only be incessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we call character, is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings and glue. ("Consequences")” - Willa Cather

25. “If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?” - Victoria Claflin Woodhull

26. “Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.” - Lafcadio Hearn

27. “It is true that nobody is above the law,but power can make somebody invisible.” - Toba Beta

28. “Love is both wondrous and yet full of peril. Love is a gateway through which hatred - disguised and unrecognized - can pass.” - David Gemmell

29. “Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?” - Oscar Wilde

30. “Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor.” - Derrick Bell

31. “Heaven doesn't only teach humans about virtue and divinity.It also shows us about politics and corruption; and that's a fact.” - Toba Beta

32. “All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.” - Clive James

33. “I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.” - Samuel Johnson

34. “An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.” - Sergei Lukyanenko

35. “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.” - Frank Beddor

36. “Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.” - George Carlin

37. “Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken.Infallibility is a sin in any man.All laws can be broken and are.Often.” - Craig Ferguson

38. “To me, my husband was my son’s murderer. He was also my daughter’s molester. A parasite nibbling on the Holy Book, he was Lucifer, holding me by the throat and driving me to sin every night. He was Bhai’s destroyer, Amma Sain’s tormentor, Ma’s humbler and the people’s exploiter. He was the rapist of orphans and the fiend that fed on the weak. But over and above all this, he was known to be the man closest to Allah, the one who could reach Him and save us.” - Tehmina Durrani

39. “…if a thing can be said to be, to exist, then such is the nature of these expansive times that this thing which is must suffer to be touched. Ours is a time of connection; the private, and we must accept this, and it’s a hard thing to accept, the private is gone. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted. And if you’re thinking how awful these sentiments are, you are perfectly correct, these are awful times, but you must remember as well that this has always been the chiefest characteristic of the Present, to everyone living through it; always, throughout history, and so far as I can see for all the days and years to come until the sun and the stars fall down and the clocks have all ground themselves to expiry and the future has long long shaded away into Time Immemorial: the Present is always an awful place to be.” - Tony Kushner

40. “You can't let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you.” - Criss Jami

41. “فيه ناس كتير أوي تخدمها الفضيحة وتكبر اسمها.. كمان الهجوم الجامد على الكبار يخليك تصدق أي حاجة على أي حد تاني.. لو جنب التخبيط في كام رجل أعمال على كام واحد بتاع سياسة, نزل خبر بيقول إن أمك بتشتغل في توظيف الأموال إنت نفسك هاتصدقهم .. فيه ناس الهجوم عليهم مكسب ليهم..ولازم يبقى غيه تنفيس” - أحمد مراد

42. “Loyalty in the legal world is distorting its own peculiar sense of reality. Loyalty is the legal world's gravity: it holds that world together; it is omnipotent; it cannot be seen but its effects are observable; it can be a powerful force of destruction. As it grows stronger and more powerful, one can only hope such a strange world will be ultimately crushed by its own “weight.” - TheKeyAuthor

43. “Humans are capable of so much more. Power mongers like you have stripped away what is most valuable to us, the importance of our heritage and family values. We have been robbed of this, blinded by your authority, while you encourage us to burry ourselves in debt and rely on our corrupt governments. Men and women around the world have been forced to work long hours to keep up with inflated debts, all the while abandoning the families they struggle to support. History repeats, and repeats. It’s time to break the cycle and start anew.” - Aaron B. Powell

44. “Most people bought the corporate party line. Experience and wisdom needed to make way for youth and beauty. The more people consumed, the better off was the economy. Newer. Bigger. Brighter. These were the things sought.” - Blue Tent Carla R. Herrera

45. “My mind mends my motives and my notion navigates my natives,for we all are made of soil-our corrupted soil.” - Munia Khan

46. “You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.” - David Baldacci

47. “Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we have succeeded only in humiliating honest people and provided a cover of darkness and complexity for the bad people. There is a scandal here, but it's not the result of venal bureaucrats. (1994) p. 99” - Philip K. Howard

48. “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” - Adolf Hitler

49. “But after living in Communist China for the past seventeen years, I knew that such a society was only a dream because those who seized power would invariably become the new ruling class. They would have the power to control the people’s lives and bend the people’s will. Because they controlled the production and distribution of goods and services in the name of the state, they would also enjoy material luxuries beyond the reach of the common people. In Communist China, details of the private lives of the leaders were guarded as state secrets. But every Chinese knew that the Party leaders lived in spacious mansions with many servants, obtained their provisions from special shops where luxury goods were made available to their household at nominal prices, and send their children in chauffeur-driven cars to exclusive schools to be taught by specially selected teachers. Even though every Chinese knew how these leaders lived, no one dared to talk about it. If we had to pass by a special shop for the military or high officials, we carefully looked the other way to avoid giving the impression we knew it was there.” - Nien Cheng

50. “Pilfering was common in Communist China’s state-owned enterprises, as the Party secretaries were slack in guarding properties that belonged to the government and poorly paid workers felt it fair compensation for their low pay. The practice was so widespread that it was an open secret. The workers joked about it and called it "Communism," which in Chinese translation means "sharing property.” - Nien Cheng