Corruption

Quotes about Corruption.

Sourced

• Corruption is a tree, whose branches are
  Of an immeasurable length: they spread
  Ev'rywhere; and the dew that drops from thence
  Hath infected some chairs and stools of authority.
  • John Fletcher, The Honest Man's Fortune (1613; published 1647), Act III, scene 3.

• I have nothing against the smell of rot but something against what hides the smell of rot in the United States of America."
  • Giannina Braschi, "United States of Banana," (2011)

• * * thieves at home must hang; but he that puts
  Into his overgorged and bloated purse
  The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book I, line 736.

• When rogues like these (a sparrow cries)
  To honours and employments rise,
  I court no favor, ask no place,
  For such preferment is disgrace.
  • John Gay, Fables (1727), Part II. Fable 2.

• At length corruption, like a general flood
  (So long by watchful ministers withstood),
  Shall deluge all; and avarice, creeping on,
  Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle III, line 135.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 140.

• Spiritalis enim virtus sacramenti ita est ut lux: etsi per immundos transeat, non inquinatur.
  • The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light: although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.
  • Augustine of Hippo, Works, Volume III. In Johannis Evang. Cap. I. Tr. V. Section XV.

• 'Tis the most certain sign, the world's accurst
  That the best things corrupted, are the worst;
  'Twas the corrupted Light of knowledge, hurl'd
  Sin, Death, and Ignorance o'er all the world;
  That Sun like this (from which our sight we have)
  Gaz'd on too long, resumes the light he gave.
  • Sir John Denham, Progress of Learning.

• I know, when they prove bad, they are a sort of the vilest creatures: yet still the same reason gives it: for, Optima corrupta pessima: the best things corrupted become the worst.
  • Owen Feltham, Resolves, XXX. Of Woman, p. 70. Pickering's Reprint of Fourth Ed. (1631).

• So true is that old saying, Corruptio optimi pessima.
  • Samuel Purchas, Pilgrimage, To the Reader; of religion. Saying may be traced to Thomas Aquinas, Prim. Soc., Art. I. 5. Aristotle, Eth. Nic., VIII. 10. 12. Eusebius, Demon. Evang. I, IV, Chapter XII, St. Gregory, Moralia on Job.

• The men with the muck-rake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, address at the Corner-stone laying of the Office Building of House of Representatives (April 14, 1906).

Unsourced

(in alphabetic order, by author)

• "Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy."
  –Ashleigh Brilliant

• "I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
  –Ashleigh Brilliant

• "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."
  –David Brin

• "Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist."
  "Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver."
  –Edmund Burke

• "Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase."
  –Charles Caleb Colton

• "Corruption of the best becomes the worst." – "Corruptio optimi pessima."
  –latin proverb

• "Money and Corruption Are ruining the land Crooked politicians Betray the working man, Pocketing the profits And treating us like sheep, And we're tired of hearing promises That we know they'll never keep."
  –Ray Davies

• "Corruption never has been compulsory."
  –Anthony Eden

• "Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today."
  –Mahatma Gandhi

• "Corruption ought not to be an inevitable product of democracy."
  -Mahatma Gandhi

• "Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves."
  –David Garrick

• "Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."
  –John Fitzgerald Kennedy

• "Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad."
  –Henry A. Kissinger

• "The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference."
  –Bess Myerson

• "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

• "I don't doubt that we suffer from a plentiful dose of corruption. But I doubt not less that people, who otherwise don't miss anything else can go on living and even prospering well."
  –José Ortega y Gasset (attributed)

• "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
  –George Orwell

• "Power does not corrupt men. Fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."
  –George Bernard Shaw

• "Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice."
  –Adlai E. Stevenson

• "The more corrupt the state, the more laws."
  –Publius Cornelius Tacitus