Bribe Quotes & Sayings

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. — Jorge Luis Borges

Run to the local bookshop and buy a copy of How to Learn Mind Control in Ten Minutes by Professor Stephen Haste and very quickly hypnotise Miss Spite into thinking he had already given her his homework. Disguise himself as a plate of spaghetti Bolognese. Bribe the school nurse into telling Miss Spite he had died. — David Walliams

Bribe cartographers to remove us from the atlas. — Melancton Hawks

Capitalists don't want free trade any more than they want whooping cough. Their nature is to conglomerate, homogenate, vertically integrate and dominate until there is no competition. The rules? Screw the rules! They'll rig the game, spit on the ball, bribe the refs, tilt the playing field, pork the cheerleaders and kick free enterprise in the nuts. — Tim Dorsey

I do what I do without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require Heaven or Hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently. — Mary Doria Russell

Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons
from coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or
reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it
arrives and give it away when it comes to you — Kent Nerburn

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular
not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people. — Walter Lippmann

Happily, you don't know how to find me. If you did, I've no doubt, you would try to bribe me to finish the story. I know how you are. I know how I am, too. I am very susceptible to bribes. As you've probably noticed, I have no self-control whatsoever. I like chocolate best. But I also have a fondness for cheese. — Pseudonymous Bosch

James Ibori gave me $15million as bribe in 2007 — Nuhu Ribadu

The humanitarian developers behind World of Warcraft have also discovered a way to bribe gamers into turning off their computers and going outside. If you log off for a few days, your character will be more 'rested' when you resume playing, a mode that temporarily speeds up your leveling. — Clive Thompson

You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! The British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to! — Humbert Wolfe

me in the bribe? — John Grisham

How can I bribe my tongue to speak as truth the things my heart so contradicts. Attach to me then your strings and pull and I shall dance and be your puppet ... for a time — Tonny K. Brown

It takes two to bribe. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Alas! the small discredit of a bribe Scarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe. — Alexander Pope

She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind. — Andrea Dworkin

Can I say that I think it should be against the law for one state to use taxpayer money to try to bribe businesses in another state to move? Which then causes the target state to use taxpayer dollars to try to bribe the businesses to stay. — Gail Collins

I'm for everyone having the opportunity to accept a $150,000 bribe. — Al Lewis

Note that life after death, which still seems to you the essential thing, was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life, and blessings on Him, he trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in the fairy tale who wins the heroine's love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What would be a bribe if it came first had better come last. — Sheldon Vanauken

Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day. — Joyce Carol Oates

The Eskimos have thirty words for describing different kinds of snow, and modern Russian has about the same number of expressions to describe giving a bribe to a state official. — Victor Pelevin

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The median family of four ... paid $4,722 in federal taxes last year. That's enough to pay for a new curtain for the secretary of commerce's office, to bribe a farmer not to plant 38 acres with corn ... seven weeks of salary for a Customs man assigned to save us from the terror of high-quality, low priced foreign TV sets, or the subsidy on 6,000 bushels of wheat to prop up the Soviet regime. Surely civilization would collapse without such essential services. — Alan Bock

What I'm talking about is more than recompense for past injustices - more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I'm talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling "patriotism" while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nothing corrupts a politician quite as much as friendship. Good politicians don't bribe; they make us like them. — Matthew Parris

Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds!
Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue! — Samuel Johnson

What that judge did is immoral. Here in Panama when we bribe somebody we expect loyalty. — John Le Carre

Do we see a college education, for example, as a ticket to privilege or as a training for service to the needy? What do we teach our teenagers in this matter? Do we urge them to enter college because it will better equip them to serve? Or do we try to bribe them with promises of future status and salary increases? No wonder they graduate more deeply concerned about their standard of living than about suffering humanity. As — Richard J. Foster

Was I not mad, after all, for journeying to this place, of my own free will? "And all for what? Original lust? Die before trying as a matter of trust, I see with staked hands a man before us, who fixes, and features and burrows a bribe, like a Pallas Athene, a winter-crossed bride. — Benjamin Robert Carrico

He shrugged. "When I was younger, I tried to make a good impression on dates. I'd take girls out dancing, bribe the bouncers to get us into trendy clubs, follow all the rules on the pickup artist sites. And one day about five years ago, I realized something: I suck at dancing, I hate trendy clubs, and the women who fall for the standard pickup techniques are airheads. So now I do stuff I like to do anyway. If my date doesn't like it, then we're probably not compatible anyway. — James L. Cambias

As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments is caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer one, was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for impartiality. — George Orwell

Britta wanted to try to turn a guard. Tamara thought it was idiotic.
"What are you going to do? Buy him beer and tell him about Kropotkin?"
I envisioned the conversation:
Vanguard: Wage Slave, are you aware that you are but a wire nail in the toolbox of capitalism?
Wage Slave: I thought I was a chisel.
Vanguard: No, the petit bourgeois are the chisels.
Wage Slave: What about a washer set? Can I be a washer set?
Vanguard: No, my ferret, run free! For I have unlocked your collar with knowledge!
Wage Slave: I want to be a chisel.
Vanguard pushes screaming ferret through hole in fence cut by the clippers of noblesse oblige.
"Well, maybe we could bribe him," said Britta. Tamara laughed.
"With what? Health insurance? — Vanessa Veselka

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used. — Sun Tzu

According to Ommaney, prior to their departure Zinat Mahal had been squabbling loudly with Jawan Bakht after the latter had fallen in love with one of his father's harem women. He also began using the family's now scarce financial resources to bribe the guards to bring him bottles of porter: 'What an instance of the state of morals and domestic economy of Ex-Royalty,' wrote a disapproving Ommaney to Saunders. 'Mother and son at enmity, the son trying to form a connection with his father's concubine, and setting at nought the precepts of his religion, buying from, and drinking, the liquor of an infidel. — William Dalrymple

It's okay to bribe people with books, right? — Eliezer Yudkowsky

To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a creditsystem in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know that all cops are not sterling characters. But you have to have someone to root for. I balance it with rotten cops who will take a bribe, who will beat somebody up. — Evan Hunter

I am nothing but the breath in and out of my nostrils, take it away and I am a slab of meat. Do whatever you set your heart to do as long as you have that breath within you, I cannot guarantee that you'll have it in the next minute. You cannot buy it or bribe somebody to give it to you — Bangambiki Habyarimana

If plants could be credited with reasoning powers, we would marvel at the imaginative ways they bribe or ensnare other creatures to carry out their wishes. — Jane Goodall

I played the piano as a boy for six years, from the time I was six to 12 years old. My piano lessons ended when my father died because our family had no more money. I used to have a mestiza teacher. She'd come once a week to teach me piano lessons, and she'd bribe me each time with an apple; otherwise, I wouldn't play. — John Gokongwei

She is the witch you burned
by daylight and crept from your home

to consult & bribe at night. The love
that tortured you you blamed on her. — Margaret Atwood

We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object. — C.S. Lewis

If only one man is left standing, a bribe cannot bite. — Mary Lawrence

You know what? I really resent the idea that the only reason someone might be good or moral is because they're religious. I do what I do," Anne said, biting off each word, "without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require heaven or hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently, thank you very much. — Mary Doria Russell

For awareness you need not go to the Himalayas; you need not go anywhere. Your life gives you enough opportunities to be aware. Somebody insults you - listen to it in full awareness. And you will be surprised - the insult is no more an insult. You may even smile. It does not hurt; it hurts only when received in unawareness. Somebody praises and appreciates you - listen with alertness. And then nobody can persuade you to do foolish things. Nobody can bribe you; flattery becomes impossible. You will smile at the whole nonsense. — Rajneesh

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority. — Gore Vidal

Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of course not! — Joseph Heller

Prey cannot bribe its way out of a predator's hand. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Under orders from Kitchener himself, an attempt was to be made to bribe the Turkish commander of the Kut siege into letting Townshend's army go in return for one million English pounds' worth of gold. If Lawrence resented being the bearer of this shameful instruction, almost without precedent in British military history, he never let on. Then again, he'd very recently been given two reminders of the puffery and hypocrisy of military culture. — Scott Anderson

So what? A lobbyist cheated Indian tribes out of $25 million then laundered their money through phony Christian charities trying to stop other Indian tribes from getting casinos [on screen: 'Thou Shalt Not Compete'] and bribe congressmen in the process. Know what I call that? I call that business as usual in Washington. [on screen: 'Screwing Indians'] — Stephen Colbert

Do you really think you can order me around?" He crossed his arms over his chest in a show of dominance.
"I have more cupcakes in my apartment. You can have them if you fix this tonight."
"Are you trying to bribe me?"
"Is it working?"
"Yes. — Helena Hunting

The planter class took an additional precautionary step, a step that would later come to be known as a "racial bribe." Deliberately and strategically, the planter class extended special privileges to poor whites in an effort to drive a wedge between them and black slaves. White settlers were allowed greater access to Native American lands, white servants were allowed to police slaves through slave patrols and militias, and barriers were created so that free labor would not be placed in competition with slave labor. These measures effectively eliminated the risk of future alliances between black slaves and poor whites. Poor whites suddenly had a direct, personal stake in the existence of a race-based system of slavery. — Michelle Alexander

It's really difficult working with kids and with babies because they are not cooperative subjects: they are not socialized into the idea that they should cheerfully and cooperatively give you information. They're not like undergraduates, who you can bribe with beer money or course credit. — Paul Bloom

Perhaps if you win this one I can put a word in for you.You know, extra carrots and that sort of thing, a bit of molasses in the evening.A bigger brass plaque for your box at home."
"That's bribery," Keeley murmured.
Brian turned, his eyes going warm. "That's bargaining," he corrected. "But if I can interest you in a bribe," he began and opened the box door intending to snatch Keeley inside for a much anticipated welcome back kiss.
He nearly stepped over Mo. "Sorry. Didn't see you there."
"I'm short.That's my cross to bear. — Nora Roberts

I shifted in my chair as Dad waited for a response. He seemed determined, his resolve unwavering. This would take tact. Prudence. Possibly Milk Duds.
"Are you psychotic?" I asked, realizing my plan to charm and bribe him if need be flew out the window the minute I opened my mouth. — Darynda Jones

... was designed to protect his heart, to bind me and bribe me to stay with him no matter what. He was giving everything he had. — Sylvia Day

The whole point of the system is to bribe you with the leftovers of what they have stolen from you in the first place. — Stefan Molyneux

The [Kodak is] the only witness I have encountered in my long experience that I couldn't bribe. — Mark Twain

agent. My testimony would have been automatically suspect, even years later. I would have been a defense counsel's wet dream. As in, Special Agent, please tell us about the bribe you can't prove you didn't take. So I would have joined — Lee Child

When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons. — John Webster

You do realize trying to bribe an officer is a felony, right?"

She cocked a brow at him as she slid her helmet back over her head and slipped her sunglasses on, starting the engine. "Who said anything about bribing you? Maybe I was trying to poison you. — T.J. Kline

Yeah me see myself as a revolutionary, would wouldn't want no help and imma take no bribe from no one and fight it single handed with music — Bob Marley

I've already instructed the
others to keep their mouths shut."
"Even Hyacinth?" Penelope asked doubtfully.
"Especially Hyacinth."
"Did you bribe her?" Violet asked. "Because it won't work unless you
bribe her."
"Good Lord," Colin muttered. "One would think I'd joined this family
yesterday. Of course I bribed her." He turned to Penelope. "No offense to
recent additions."
"Oh, none taken. — Julia Quinn

Travis walked in and shut the door behind him. "I was mad. I heard you spitting out everything that's wrong with me to America and it pissed me off. I just meant to go out and have a few drinks and try to figure some things out, but before I knew it, I was piss drunk and those girls ... ," he paused. "I woke up this morning and you weren't in bed, and when I found you on the recliner and saw the wrappers on the floor, I felt sick."
"You could have just asked me instead of spending all that money at the grocery store just to bribe me to stay."
"I don't care about the money, Pidge. I was afraid you'd leave and never speak to me again. — Jamie McGuire

You can't bribe your way to heaven — Thabiso Monkoe

You love him still and struggle against your love, feeling that it will undo you. He knows this and he will tempt you by every lure he can devise, every deceit he can employ. Sorrow and sin will surely follow if you yield; happiness never can be yours with him; doubt, remorse and self-reproach will kill love, and a time will come when you will find that in gaining a brief joy you have lost your peace forever. Oh, Agatha, be warned in time, do not listen to your own weak heart but to the conscience that nothing can bribe or silence. — Louisa May Alcott

Sir, are you trying to offer me a bribe? How much — Groucho Marx

It is but shaping the bribe to the taste, and every one has his price. — Samuel Richardson

A gift without a heart behind it is a bribe. God asks for our heart, not our gifts. — Samuel Chadwick

What did "good government" really mean? Langlie and his brotherhood promised an end to political corruption. (There's no evidence that Langlie ever even took a drink, much less a bribe.) The days of "honest graft" were over, at least for a while. But seen from another perspective - that of ordinary citizens without access to Langlie and Abram's elite network - Langlie didn't so much end corruption as legalize it. Langlie wasn't opposed to a government organized around the interests of the greedy; he just didn't want to have to break the law to serve them. — Jeff Sharlet

Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all. — Will Durant

God doesn't bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will. — Stephen King

During the war, the holders of power in all countries found it necessary to bribe the populations into cooperation by unusual concessions. Wage-earners were allowed a living wage, Hindus were told they were men and brothers, women were given the vote, and young people were allowed to enjoy those innocent pleasures of which the old, in the name of morality, always wish to rob them. The war being won, the victors set to work to deprive their tools of advantages temporarily conceded. — Bertrand Russell

You could not bribe honest people, but bad people would accept bribery. — Anne Holm

Never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe. — Claud Cockburn

Prince Brigan. And where's your Lady?"
"In her history lesson. She went without complaint and I've been trying to prepare myself for what it might mean. Either she's planning to bribe me about something or she's ill. — Kristin Cashore

I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long Winter. — Ismail Kadare

One-way ticket to Las Vegas: three hundred fifty dollars. A week's stay at the
Bellagio while he convinced Nicki to give him this crazy job: eighteen hundred dollars.
Cost of pizza to bribe his way into her apartment: fifteen bucks. Seeing her reaction to his
claim that she didn't particularly affect him sexually: absolutely priceless. — Shayla Black

A bribe is just a promise, turned on its head. — Brandon Sanderson

A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it. — Chinua Achebe

I should probably be noble and tell you I'll let you go if it's what you want, but I'm a spoiled, selfish brat. I'll follow you, beg you, bribe you to stay. Because you're the first one to make it to my island. I don't want to let you leave. — Heidi Cullinan

Nevertheless, this one fact should be apparent: turning the other cheek is a bribe. It is a valid form of action for only so long as the Christian is impotent politically or militarily. — Gary North

Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold;
Not all Apollo's Pythian treasures hold,
Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway,
Can bribe the poor possession of the day. — Homer

The public symbols and constant reminders of black subjugation were supported by whites across the political spectrum, though the plight of poor whites remained largely unchanged. For them, the racial bribe was primarily psychological. — Michelle Alexander

Death takes no bribes. — Benjamin Franklin

The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom; to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy. — John Le Carre

Accept little bribes,
and you have little integrity.
Reject some bribes,
and you have selective integrity.
Reject every bribe,
and you have great integrity. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Country jakes are always whining about the sanctity of states' rights and individual freedoms. Yet when a couple of queers want to get married in Massachusetts, half the South goes apeshit with homemade posters and fire-breathing sermons. And when a few million concerned residents of states thousands of miles away decide they want to stop destroying their landscape in the name of corporate mammon and consumer stupidity, the South sends out its greasy merchants of avarice to cajole, bribe, hector, lie, intimidate, and "lobby" until the seed of their plantation mentality is protected and their gluttonous mouths are once again filled with the jizz of the master caste before whom they kneel like Bourbon Street whores on Navy payday. — Chuck Thompson

I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect - it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman. — Graham Greene

Over the past seventy years the various identity struggles have to some degree remediated the great wrongs that have been done to workers, people of color, Indigenous Peoples, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, while helping to humanize our society overall. But they have also had a shadow side in the sense that they have encouraged us to think of ourselves more as determined than as self-determining, more as victims of 'isms' (racism, sexism, capitalism, ableism) than as human beings who have the power of choice. For our own survival we must assume individual and collective responsibility for creating a new nation - one that is loved rather than feared and one that does not have to bribe and bully other nations to win support. — Grace Lee Boggs

There is a fine line in the Third World between half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe and half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe
so they can throw you in jail. — P. J. O'Rourke

The Dead are a larger army than any ever assembled, and they follow no leader, fear no threat, and accept no bribe or compromise. The Dead are the silent majority, and should they ever decide to say something, it will be the new law of the land. — Isaac Marion

Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon. Moses used it like a master. Coupled with his overpowering personality, a buffet often did as much for a proposal as a bribe. — Robert A. Caro

Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. — Walter Lippmann

A magnificent natural view is a pink curtain. Open the curtain; you will then see the most horrible life struggles over there! Could it be that the beauty of the nature is a bribe given to us by God to forget the atrocities of the nature? — Mehmet Murat Ildan

We don't have to beg or bribe God to give us strength or hope or patience. We need only turn to Him, admit that we can't do this on our own, and understand that bravely bearing up under long-term illness is one of the most human, and one of the most godly, things we can ever do. One of the things that constantly reassures me that God is real, and not just an idea that religious leaders made up, is the fact that people who pray for strength, hope and courage so often find resources of strength, hope and courage that they did not have before they prayed. — Harold S. Kushner

That seemed to be a feature of life in the country [Malawi]: to welcome strangers, to let them live out their fantasy of philanthropy - a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a welfare center, a malaria eradication program, or a church; and then determine if in any of this effort and expense there was a side benefit - a kickback, a bribe, an easy job, a free vehicle. If the scheme didn't work - and few of them did work - whose fault was that? Whose idea was it in the first place? — Paul Theroux

You make the bribe big enough and they'll find you. Just make sure you do everything right out in the open. Let everyone know exactly what you want and how much you're willing to pay for it. The first time you act guilty or ashamed, you might get into trouble." "I wish you'd come with me," Milo remarked. "I won't feel safe among people who take bribes. They're no better than a bunch of crooks." "You'll be all right," Yossarian assured him with confidence. "If you run into trouble, just tell everybody that the security of the country requires a strong domestic Egyptian-cotton speculating industry. — Joseph Heller

Don't spoil kids by trying to buy them off, to buy their time. Kids aren't stupid. They know a bribe when they see one. They want a parent not a payoff. — Carew Papritz