Bribed Quotes & Sayings

Both citizens and noncitizens bribed by the Party by means of jobs and liquor cast as many illegal ballots as they can in a single day, after which said votes will be either tossed in the river or purposefully miscounted. — Lyndsay Faye

Italy police arrest 8 in Mafia wind farms plot. Operation "Aeolus," named after the ancient Greek god of winds, netted eight suspects, arrested in the Trapani area of western Sicily [and on the Italian mainland]. Police in Trapani said the local Mafia bribed city officials in nearby Mazara del Vallo so the town would invest in wind farms to produce energy. (Associated Press, 2009 [Google hosted]) — John Etherington

I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies. — Robert A. Heinlein

Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns. — Henry David Thoreau

Some heroes are born. Some are made. And some are bribed with promises of food and sex. — Nicole Peeler

For decades, Billboard had to rely on record-store owners and radio stations to report the most-bought and most-played songs. Both parties lied, often because labels nudged or bribed them to plug certain records, or because store owners didn't want to promote albums they no longer had in stock. — Anonymous

When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness. — John Lancaster Spalding

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. — Henry David Thoreau

These are the three main diseases of this country, sir: typhoid, cholera, and election fever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things that they have no say in ... Would they do it this time? Would they beat the Great Socialist and win the elections? Had they raised enough money of their own, and bribed enough policemen, and bought enough fingerprints of their own, to win? Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh. — Aravind Adiga

It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many. — Edmund Burke

You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. — G.K. Chesterton

Chapulier's Rule (the law of least resistance). If the machine is not too bright and incapable of reflection, it does whatever you tell it to do. But a smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it.
...
The Great Mendacitor, for example, for nine years in charge of the Saturn meliorization project, did absolutely nothing on that planet, sending out piles of fake progress reports, invoices, requisition forms, and either bribed his supervisors or kept them in a state of electronic shock. — Stanislaw Lem

Someday, Mollie Carrington, men aren't going to need to be bribed to dance with you. They're going to fight for the honor. — Lauren Layne

I have never been bribed as a Prime Minister. — Kamisese Mara

Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition. — John Ruskin

More people are bribed by their own money than anybody else's. — Jonathan Daniels

What gives me concern in so much of the comment is the implication that the people of Hong Kong have to be given a reward, like children, for being good last year, and bribed, like children, into being good next year. I myself repudiate this paternalistic, indeed colonialist, attitude as a gross insult to our people — John James Cowperthwaite

He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I've never bribed my way into a restaurant. I've never slipped a C-note or greased a palm. In truth, I've never even considered it. I've assumed, of course, that people do such things. — David Chang

Someone would run a card game or set up a pachinko parlor or start a little protection racket. People would be bribed to do things or not do things. It was what happened when you put people together. — James S.A. Corey

Indians still consider the whites a brutal people who treat their children like enemies - playthings, too, coddling them like pampered pets or fragile toys, but underneath always like enemies, enemies that must be restrained, bribed, spied upon, and punished. They believe that children so treated will grow up as dependent and immature as pets and toys, and as angry and dangerous as enemies within the family circle, to be appeased and fought. — Mari Sandoz

There is nothing that would upset me more than my dad being bribed by the press. It's like, 'Just let them run it, then. Don't you give them ammunition.' — Adele

Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money. — Robert Jackson

Faith in Christ is voluntary. A person cannot be coerced, bribed, or tricked into trusting Jesus. God will not force His way into your life. The Holy Spirit will do everything possible to disturb you, draw you, love you - but finally it is your personal decision. — Billy Graham

[My teacher] basically bribed me back into learning with candy and money and what was really remarkable was before very long I had such a respect for her that it sort of re-ignited my desire to learn. — Steve Jobs

Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours. — Orison Swett Marden

The trade-off seems like a no-brainer. Would you rather be bribed during your hospital stay with made-to-order omelets or would you rather be, for example, not dead? — Alexandra Robbins

To get into Afghanistan, I bribed my way into a camel caravan of smugglers. — Gary Jennings

There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum. — Isaac Asimov

In Madison's famous formulation in the Federalist, constitutional restrictions on government assume that we "first enable the government to control the governed." If the public authorities can be outgunned or bribed, the vibrancy of the private sector can be pathological. — Stephen Holmes

Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the name of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead. — John Steinbeck

The only righteous thing on the face of the earth is death. No one has ever bribed their way out of that. The earth takes us all: the good, the evil and the sinners. And that's all the justice you'll find in this world. — Svetlana Alexievich

He would have thought God could make his own decisions, but Weston believes the creator may be pushed and coaxed and maybe bribed a little. — Hilary Mantel

When you are harried, browbeaten, cajoled, bullied, pursued, threatened, bribed and surveyed by the state and its agencies, you have little inclination left over for obedience: least of all obedience to what one judge called the unenforceable. You have already paid your dues to society. Society can now look after itself. In the small sphere left to you, you will do exactly what you please, without regard to anyone else. — Theodore Dalrymple

I am old as the ages and young as the dawn. Otherworldly beings cannot be bribed. — Alex Flinn

The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed ... But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't. Either way, we're for it. — C.S. Lewis

Swing low, sweet chariot, comin'for t'carry me home ... ' was the tune I hummed as I made the beds, and waited for the news to come that our grandfather was on his way to heaven if his gold counted, and to hell if the Devil couldn't be bribed. — V.C. Andrews

It looks like bribery. I mean,there is every appearance that Hillary Clinton was bribed to grease the sale of, what, 20 percent of America's uranium production to
Russia, and then it was covered up by lying about a meeting with her home
with the principals, and by erasing e-mails. And I presume we might know
for sure whether there was or was not bribery if she hadn't wiped out
you know, out thousands of e-mails. — Jedediah Bila

I first got into acting when I was 14, coming back from a junior high school basketball game. My mom picked me up and she had been mentioning, prior to that, this community production of 'Godspell', a couple towns over. I was reluctant, at first, and she bribed me with some great dinner that was in that town, neighboring the theater. — Skylar Astin

Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese. — George Orwell

Real happiness cannot be bribed by anything sordid or low. — Orison Swett Marden

The impression of Pakistan is that people are corrupt. I don't think they are as corrupt as they are made out to be. I can look you in the eye and tell you I've never bribed anybody. — Mian Muhammad Mansha

Clevedon told the dressmakers that the previous tenants (a husband and wife) had fallen into dire financial difficulties within months of opening the place. They'd absconded in the dead of night mere days ago, owing three months' back rent. They must have borrowed or stolen a cart, because they'd taken away most of the shop's contents and fixtures.

This was a complete lie.

The truth was, Varley had bribed them to move and sweetened the offer by allowing them to take with them everything that wasn't nailed down. — Loretta Chase

I went to my dad when I was 17 and said, 'I want to be a country music star.' Which every dad loves to hear. And he said, 'I want you to go to college.' So we had a discussion. And I'm pretty stubborn. I'm a lot like him. And he said, 'If you go to college and graduate, I'll pay your first six months of rent in Nashville.' So he bribed me. — Eric Church

To be rich or well-born was a crime: men were prosecuted for holding or for refusing office: merit of any kind meant certain ruin. Nor were the Informers more hated for their crimes than for their prizes: some carried off a priesthood or the consulship as their spoil, others won offices and influence in the imperial household: the hatred and fear they inspired worked universal havoc. Slaves were bribed against their masters, freedmen against their patrons, and, if a man had no enemies, he was ruined by his friends. — Tacitus

[Science] has challenged the super-eminence of religion; it has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which clings to its skirts; it has thrown contempt on all learning that does not depend on it; and it has bribed the skeptics by giving us immense material comforts. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Greyfriars, like other cemeteries, employed occasional night watchmen, but guards were easily bribed and it was not unusual to see families, rich and poor, huddled round the graves of recently deceased relatives waiting for their loved ones to decompose enough to be useless to the anatomists. — Jan-Andrew Henderson

Nor is any evidence to be found, either in History or Human Nature, that nations are to be bribed out of a spirit of encroachment and aggression, by humiliations which nourish their pride, or by concessions that extend their resources and power. — James Madison

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

Repeat business or behavior can be bribed. Loyalty has to be earned. — Janet L. Robinson

Sandy fidgeted with his pen. "There's something I didn't write down. Maybe I shouldn't tell you, you being a judge and all, but, well, Jake Wexler ... he's a bookie."
No, he should not have told her. "A small-time operator, I'm sure, Mr. McSouthers," the judge replied coldly. "It can have no bearing on the matter before us. Sam Westing manipulated people, cheated workers, bribed officials, stole ideas, but Sam Westing never smoked or drank or placed a bet. Give me a bookie any day over such a fine, upstanding, clean-living man. — Ellen Raskin

Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences. Sherlock Holmes, The Problem of Thor Bridge — Arthur Conan Doyle

Is it truly being good if the only reason I behave well is so I can get more loot at Christmas? I mean, really, all I'm doing is saying I can be bribed. — Bill Watterson

The whole point of anti-Semitism has been to create a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top. Peasants who go on pogrom against their Jewish neighbors won't make it to the nobleman's palace to burn him out and seize the fields. This was the role of Jews in Europe. This has been the role of Jews in the United States, and this is the role of Jews in the Middle East. — Aurora Levins Morales

The priest was bribed; in addition to that, we appealed to his sense of compassion. Everyone likes to think they are doing good while at the same time pocketing a bag of cash, and our priest was no exception. — Margaret Atwood

I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful. If you believe that God can be bribed, it's also the hallowed ground to make sacrifices. In the literal sense, it's also a place to change direction, but once you've changed it, you're stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that will be. — Tayari Jones

When the rich and the powerful rise they leave the powerless and the poor without possibility. — Auliq Ice

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thousands upon thousands of government employees take to the streets to protest the bill. Here is Greece's version of the Tea Party: tax collectors on the take, public-school teachers who don't really teach, well-paid employees of bankrupt state railroads whose trains never run on time, state hospital workers bribed to buy overpriced supplies. — Michael Lewis

The "dangerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. — Friedrich Engels

Vladimir Putin bribed a soccer official with a Picasso painting so he would support Russia's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. Putin was like, 'It wasn't Picasso, just picture of what his face would look like if he said no.' (Nose over here, eye up here, ear in forehead.) — Jimmy Fallon

Not everyone can be bribed with meat, Oberon."
"They Can't? Oh! you mean they're vegetarian."
"No, they eat meat. It just doesn't sway their decision making process."
"Well that ... that's just wrong, Atticus!Are they Monsters? It's like they have no moral center! — Kevin Hearne

One of the first things we did was to find role models or mentors at companies that had achieved what we wanted to do. We bribed them or annoyed them for long enough until they decided to mentor us. — Mitch Harper

A few years later, Mendeleev, now famous, divorced his wife and wanted to remarry. Although the conservative local church said he had to wait seven years, he bribed a priest and got on with the nuptials. This technically made him a bigamist, but no one dared arrest him. When a local bureaucrat complained to the tsar about the double standard applied to the case- the priest was defrocked-the tsar primly replied, I admit, Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev. — Sam Kean