87 Quotes On Corruption

In today's world, corruption often lurks in the shadows of institutions, eroding trust and disrupting the social fabric. It is an issue that transcends boundaries, affecting lives globally through its insidious reach into politics, business, and everyday affairs. Yet, amid the challenges it poses, corruption has also inspired thinkers, leaders, and activists to speak out against it, capturing their insights and wisdom in powerful words. In this collection, you'll find 87 thought-provoking quotes on corruption that shine a light on its complexities, motivate action, and remind us of the enduring battle for integrity and justice.

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. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

3. “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

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

5. “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

6. “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

7. “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” - seneca

8. “In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.” - H.L. Mencken

9. “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

10. “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

11. “Hidden away behind the closed doors of aristocratic and bourgeois privilege, concealed under those ultra-respectable masks of black frock coat and veil, the green glow of corruption flickers into sight, steadies, and spreads everywhere, fostered by Lorrain's horrified and complicitous gaze. This decadent detective is at one with the criminal he pursues, acknowledging openly that the representation of corruption is one of the most pleasurable forms that corruption can take. In this enterprise, art is the mask that both exposes and conceals culpability.” - Jennifer Birkett

12. “Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. ” - Ayn Rand

13. “To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism.” - G. Edward Griffin

14. “I know he is--sensitive--on some points, Detective, but you must bear in mind how hard it is for an honest man to do his work in relative obscurity, while dishonest men attain wealth and renown. That is why corruption is so pernicious. It breaks the will of good men.” - Jed Rubenfeld

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

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

17. “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

18. “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

19. “What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter 'Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?' in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton 'rapid response' team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's 'issues.” - Christopher Hitchens

20. “This man had something to hide, some shame in his past, and those with a past can always be bought.” - Ian Rankin

21. “When honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose[?]” - Anne Bishop

22. “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

23. “Sambit Bal may be right that this is a scandal the IPL needed. It certainly brings fans face-to-face with the tangled reality of their amusement, based as it is on a self-seeking, self-perpetuating commercial oligarchy issued licenses to exploit cricket as they please. Whether the fans care is another matter: one of the reasons Indians have embraced economic liberalisation so fervently is a shoulder-shrugging resignation about the efficiency and integrity of their institutions. Given the choice between Lalit Modi, with his snappy suits and his soi-disant 'Indian People's League', and the BCCI, stuffed with grandstanding politicians and crony capitalists, where would your loyalties lie?” - Gideon Haigh

24. “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” - Aung San Suu Kyi

25. “The devil himself can become beauty, so we are told, to corrupt mankind."(Marco)” - Iain Pears

26. “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

27. “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

28. “No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.” - Kurt Vonnegut

29. “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

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

31. “It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. … You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! and chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' mother, who bore her child for love and love alone. You had your choice between Marx's insight into the productivity of your living labor power, which alone creates the value of commodities and the idea of the state. You forgot the living energy of your labor and chose the idea of the state. In the French Revolution, you had your choice between the cruel Robespierre and the great Danton. You chose cruelty and sent greatness and goodness to the guillotine. In Germany you had your choice between Goring and Himmler on the one hand and Liebknecht, Landau, and Muhsam on the other. You made Himmler your police chief and murdered your great friends. You had your choice between Julius Streicher and Walter Rathenau. You murdered Rathenau. You had your choice between Lodge and Wilson. You murdered Wilson. You had your choice between the cruel Inquisition and Galileo's truth. You tortured and humiliated the great Galileo, from whose inventions you are still benefiting, and now, in the twentieth century, you have brought the methods of the Inquisition to a new flowering. … Every one of your acts of smallness and meanness throws light on the boundless wretchedness of the human animal. 'Why so tragic?' you ask. 'Do you feel responsible for all evil?' With remarks like that you condemn yourself. If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn't perish, struck down by your smallness.” - Wilhelm Reich

32. “Innocence eroded into nightmare.All because of very bad touch.Love, corrupted.” - Ellen Hopkins

33. “How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.” - Graham Greene

34. “Smartass Disciple: Master, I want to eradicate all corruptions in this world.Master of Stupidity: Let it be a bit! Otherwise you'll make us jobless for good.” - Toba Beta

35. “You know, it's pretty easy reading this book to see why I was angry and confused for all those years. I lived my life being told different stories: some true, some lies and I still don't know which is which. Children are born innocent. At birth we are very much like a new hard drive - no viruses, no bad information, no crap that's been downloaded into it yet. It's what we feed into that hard drive, or in my case "head drive" that starts the corruption of the files.” - Nikki Sixx

36. “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

37. “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

38. “If you're patriotic, stand up for the Bill of Rights because once they strip your rights from you, you will pay hell to get them back. You will and we're in the process of it right now.” - Jesse Ventura

39. “If corruption had already taken root, then good seeds must be preserved.” - Toba Beta

40. “Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.” - Wally Lamb

41. “It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

42. “Procrastination is also a subtle act of corruption – it corrupts valuable time” - Dr. Amit Abraham

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

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

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

46. “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemos.” - Bernard Of Cluny

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

48. “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

49. “Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar.” - Criss Jami

50. “All the things of the wild have their proper uses. Only misuse makes them evil.” - Ellis Peters

51. “I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.” - William Hazlitt

52. “The last time that I consciously wrote anything to 'save the honor of the Left', as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it no higher) of Clinton. I used leftist categories to measure him, in other words, and to show how idiotic was the belief that he was a liberal's champion. Again, more leftists than you might think were on my side or in my corner, and the book was published by Verso, which is the publishing arm of the New Left Review. However, if a near-majority of leftists and liberals choose to think that Clinton was the target of a witch-hunt and the victim of 'sexual McCarthyism', an Arkansan Alger Hiss in other words, you become weary of debating on their terms and leave them to make the best of it.” - Christopher Hitchens

53. “O Rose, thou art sick.The invisible wormThat flies in the nightIn the howling stormHas found out thy bedOf crimson joy,And his dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.” - William Blake

54. “Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.” - Edmund Burke

55. “I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began."And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all.""I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly."Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.” - Iain Pears

56. “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

57. “Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject.” - Edward Abbey

58. “And the so-called 'political process' is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests.” - Edward Abbey

59. “Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.” - Frank Herbert

60. “As always, imagine how great the press corps would be if it devoted 1/1000th the energy to dissecting non-sex political wrongdoing” - Glenn Greenwald

61. “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

62. “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

63. “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

64. “It is the duty of youths to war against indiscipline and corruption because they are the leaders of tomorrow.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

65. “Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,And solid pudding against empty praise. Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,Till genial Jacob, or a warm third day,Call forth each mass, a poem, or a play:How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry.” - Alexander Pope

66. “What fueled this hatred? Society.” - Shannon A Thompson

67. “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

68. “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

69. “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

70. “The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption.” - Criss Jami

71. “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

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

73. “It is purity of spirit that will keep corruption from the flesh” - Mark Lawrence

74. “. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.” - Jeremy Bentham

75. “وامتلأت الأسواق بالمواكبتبيع صديد الوهم.. والمراكبوفارشه بالوطن على الرصيفبالفكروالجياعوبالعناكب..ومذلة الرغيف!!” - عبد الرحمن الأبنودي

76. “They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.” - Stephen King

77. “My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

78. “Love corrupts and absolute love corrupts absolutely. The unreasonable systems of men, that is.” - Silvia Hartmann

79. “إن الانسان لا يمكن ان يكون شريفًا داخل محيط من الفساد و الفسق، الشرف لايمكن أن يكون فردياً بأى حال من الاحوال،حتى لو تحلى به الانسان و اعتنقه، فالشرف كما يبدو لي الان؛ لا يتحقق بالاختيار فقط ولا بالممارسة فحسب و الا فأنا شريك بالصمت في هذه الجريمة.” - خيري شلبي

80. “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

81. “Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

82. “I make love like a snake disguised as an elephant and a donkey. But I mustn’t talk about sexual congress and Congress simultaneously.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

83. “I came to the state twenty years ago from the South, the gothic South. I’ve heard it called that, haven’t you, Mister Morgan? ‘Thought I was gettin’ away from all that. You know, the Tennessee Williams’ decadence, the Huey Long corruption, the brewin’ and simmerin’ violence. I actually found that I kind of missed it. Then, I found out it was all here, too, but without the charm.” - Jackson Burnett

84. “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

85. “There’s always someone bigger and badder who can knock you off your perch—even if you’re me. Never forget it and you don’t have to worry about corruption. You’ll be too afraid with watching your own back. --Alexandria "Dria" McAndrews” - C.J. Ellisson

86. “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

87. “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