Corrupt People Quotes & Sayings

When people who are seeking change start out, they are driven by commitment to a cause. But as internecine power struggles take over, one-time idealists fall prey to corruption. They become just as corrupt and manipulative as the system that they want to overthrow. — Anurag Kashyap

Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people's misery. They lie when it suits them and don't see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don't have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person. — Brenna Yovanoff

The only person on this ship who gets paid for what they do is you, Alix. The rest of us live off our trust funds and we use those funds for our humanitarian missions. I do what I do because I can't stand to see innocent people bullied by a corrupt government. I don't want to see a baby starve and die because some fat politician wants to work its parents into the ground for a mineral most of them can't even pronounce. (Devyn) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Many people would fight against the idea that they are corrupt. While in the real sense, they are corrupt because they don't live by the principles of honesty and truth. — Sunday Adelaja

People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever. — Fay Weldon

We live in a blatantly corrupt world and smart people engage in the wise practice of risk management. — Steven Magee

Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we all got along. If there were no terrorism, Islamophobia, Western hypocrisy, corrupt government in African countries (especially Liberia), sexism, nativism, people like Donald Trump, stereotypes, war, Capitalism, Communism, Marxism and xenophobia. — Henry Johnson Jr

China need to be fought back on. And what we need to do is go at the things that they are most sensitive and most embarrassing to them; that they're hiding; get that information and put it out in public. Let the Chinese people start to digest how corrupt the Chinese government is; how they steal from the Chinese people; and how they're enriching oligarchs all throughout China. — Chris Christie

Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly. — Malcolm X

Among the numerous pleasures of Vienna the hotel evenings are famous. During supper Strauss or Lanner play waltzes ... After every waltz they get huge applause; and if they play a Quodlibet, or jumble of opera, song and dance, the hearers are so overjoyed that they don't know what to do with themselves. It shows the corrupt taste of the Viennese public. — Frederic Chopin

The more you pander to what is, presumably, the taste of young people, the more you corrupt. — Ruth Rendell

Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power. — William Gaddis

I want to be a politician. I think I understand how the system works, I think a lot of politicians are corrupt, and it's about time we put some people in there who are going to look out for the majority of the people instead of the rich people. — Charles Barkley

During my many years in international business and public life, I have had the good fortune of sitting down for lunch with people with whom I completely disagreed, in practice and principle: Soviet communists, heads of state from various unsavory regimes, benighted religious figures, corrupt business leaders. — Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

Stop tagging everyone into your life's profile. For all you don't know, some will neither comment nor commend you; some may not like or hike with you! Evil companies corrupt good morals ... Watch who goes with you and why! ... live life soooo well!! — Israelmore Ayivor

The only way to survive among the evil and corrupt people is to be even more wicked and more corrupt than they are! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

We watch so many TV shows and movies about jaded or corrupt policemen, we forget people join the police force to do good, and they really care about that. — Enrico Colantoni

A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people, but those of multinational corporations. — Suzy Kassem

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people. — Wendell Phillips

The Arts are pure. It's people that are corrupt. — Tim Easley

That is the problem with this rich and anguished generation. Somewhere a long time ago they fell in love with the idea that politicians- even the slickest and brightest presidential candidates- were real heroes and truly exciting people. That is wrong on its face. They are mainly dull people with corrupt instincts and criminal children. — Hunter S. Thompson

I don't blame the people for the fact that so many movies are bad. I think there's a corrupt, perverted, lazy and sloppy attitude that's pervasive in the movie business. The whole entertainment business is kind of crumbling around us. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

They can kill, harm, exile, imprison, destroy/ defame a person but not an idea. They can co-opt/ corrupt a person but not an idea. An idea that becomes a collective movement & ideology. A collective ideology cannot be killed, harmed, exiled, imprisoned, destroyed, defamed, co-opted or corrupted. This shall always prevail and stay as an ideology of the people collectively. — Jeroninio Almeida

Since corrupt people unite amongst themselves to constitute a force, then honest people must do the same. — Leo Tolstoy

The problem of corrupt clergy haunts God's family in every age. Priests who misuse and abuse their authority inflict untold damage upon the people of God. — Scott Hahn

I think it's very humble to believe that there is no man, woman or child who should live in tyranny. That people who say, well, maybe Arabs just aren't ready for democracy or maybe Africans just are going to have corrupt governments, that seems to me arrogant. — Condoleezza Rice

You gotta constantly purify yourself, living in the city, around human beings. There might be people close to you who affect you inside yourself in such a corrupt way that it screws with your ability to do what you do. But if you make sure that the people who are close you are good people who are there for you and love you, you can create your temple everywhere you go. — John Frusciante

The subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: It leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both. — Al Gore

How people see the world is often a reflection of how they see themselves. If they think that the world is just a cesspool of lies and deceit, then they themselves may be full of lies and deceit. Watch out for those people who are always telling you just how corrupt the rest of the world is. As the saying goes, 'It takes one to know one.' — David J. Lieberman

Innocence is impossible when people have never had the choice of becoming corrupt by dominating others. — Sheila Rowbotham

God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own ... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I've done this sort of thing before. Not prophecies so much, but you'd be surprised how many people want to realign their ancestral lines to seem nobler, or rewrite their family history to remove more morally questionable episodes." He paused to recall a recent rewrite. "One lord wanted the murderers removed from his family line. His family was so corrupt, he ended up with three virgin births, two generations removed entirely and a lady who gave birth at the age of two. Still, no one questions it as there is evidence in the archives." Bubo smugly tapped a book. "There is one thing though, faking a prophecy in the past is easy, you already know the result. How will you make this come true in the future?"
"I have someone in mind for it, but I'm not sure he'll go for it. But then prophecy is all optional anyway." Corvid looked up as if a thought had occurred to him. "I'd best go check on my man, I've not met him yet. — Dylan Perry

Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprison and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? Have you ever wondered why it is that all we seem to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants? You will have to accept that this is mostly your fault — Jamaica Kincaid

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. — George Orwell

Nor is my dream of a Muslim Reformation a matter for Muslims alone. People of all faiths, or of no faith, have a great interest in a changed Islam: a faith that is more respectful of the basic doctrines of human rights, that universally preaches less violence and more tolerance, that promotes less corrupt and less chaotic governments, that allows for more doubt and more dissent, that encourages more education, more freedom, and more equality before a modern system of law. I see no other way forward for us -- at least no other way that is not strewn with corpses. Islam and modernity must be reconciled. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Since, on a socio-economic level, there are myriad wrongs that need to
be righted, a major problem for the species seems to be how to assist
the unfortunate, throttle the corrupt, preserve the biosphere, and
effectively organize for socio-economic alteration wihtout the
organization being taken over by dullards, the people who, ironically,
are best suited to serving organized causes since they seldom have
anything more imaginative to do and, restricted by tunnel vision,
probably wouldn't do it if they had. 151 — Tom Robbins

It is unreasonable for the common people to expect a known corrupt legal system to protect them. — Steven Magee

Governments that block the aspirations of their people, that steal or are corrupt, that oppress and torture or that deny freedom of expression and human rights should bear in mind that they will find it increasingly hard to escape the judgement of their own people, or where warranted, the reach of international law. — William Hague

The reality is we that have a corrupt campaign finance system which separates the American people's needs and desires from what Congress is doing. So to my mind, what we have got to do is wage a political revolution where millions of people have given up on the political process, stand up and fight back, demand the government that represents us and not just a handful of campaign contribution - contributors. — Bernie Sanders

Category IV spending tends also to corrupt the people involved. All such programs put some people in a position to decide what is good for other people. The effect is to instill in the one group a feeling of almost God-like power; in the other, a feeling of childlike dependence. The capacity of the beneficiaries for independence, for making their own decisions, atrophies through disuse. In addition to the waste of money, in addition to the failure to achieve the intended objectives, the end result is to rot the moral fabric that holds a decent society together. — Milton Friedman

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today. — Theodore Roosevelt

Critics become criminals since truth is anathema to an empire or any authoritarian government that depends on lies for its existence. The informant who provides the people with the truth cannot be protected by whistle-blower laws or the Constitution. It is the truth-tellers who are sent to prison or are killed while those who undermine our Constitution are promoted. This lasts until the corrupt government is dismantled. — Ron Paul

Communism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism. — Tom Shadyac

It has always seemed to me that the social order was implicit in the very nature of things, and required nothing more from the human spirit than care in arranging the various elements; that a people could be governed without being made thralls or libertines or victims thereby; that man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt. — Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

I've never been satisfied with myself, ever. But I feel good about myself, because I'm truthful. I don't corrupt myself. I'm also a perfectionist. I'm very impatient. I've got energy and drive and I can't stand inefficiency in people. And I can't stand dumb people. Why surround yourself with people who are going to tie you down? I don't suffer fools. — Jack LaLanne

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community. — John W. Gardner

You assume we are all sexually stable; while on the other hand, as I have become acquainted with people, I find that they are all perverted sinners, one way or another, that the whole
society is corrupt and rotten and repressed and unconscious that it exhibits its repression in various forms of social sadism. — Allen Ginsberg

Some of the most corrupt people that you will meet in life are working in corporate government law enforcement. They make criminals look like amateurs. — Steven Magee

The continent did not appeal: France was filled with irritating people; Spain was corrupt and unstable; Russia, impossible; Italy, absurd; Germany, rigid; Portugal, in decline. Holland, thought favorably disposed toward him, was dull. The United States of America, he decided, was a possibility. — Elizabeth Gilbert

This conference on religious education seems to your humble servant the last word in absurdity. We are told by a delightful 'expert' that we ought not really teach our children about God lest we rob them of the opportunity of making their own discovery of God, and lest we corrupt their young minds by our own superstitions. If we continue along these lines the day will come when some expert will advise us not to teach our children the English language, since we rob them thereby of the possibility of choosing the German, French or Japanese languages as possible alternatives. Don't these good people realize that they are reducing the principle of freedom to an absurdity? — Reinhold Niebuhr

And maybe because of the boiling April sun, he thought about water and ice. Water and ice were made of the same thing. He thought most people were made of the same thing, too. He himself was probably a little different from the corrupt people around him. Ice was distinct from - and in his view, better than - what it was made of. He wanted to be better than what he was made of. In Mumbai's dirty water, he wanted to be ice. He wanted to have ideals. — Katherine Boo

A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims ... but accomplices — George Orwell

He asks how the evil is to be remedied. I tell him that there seems to be little chance for avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy; that the only ground of hope must be the morals of the people, but that these are, I fear, too corrupt. — Gouverneur Morris

No other facet of American business is more corrupt, more intoxicated with illegality, more weakly regulated, and has a greater impact on poor and working people than debt collectors; not credit card companies or subprime mortgages, not even payday lenders. — Gary Weiss

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith. — Anton Chekhov

There's so much corruption in America; there's so much corruption around the world. It's all coming to the surface thanks to the Internet, and thanks to the younger people who are saying, 'We don't like corrupt people.' — Jon Anderson

Today, the Muslim world is injured and corrupt people who are the enemies of all Muslims are trying to cause disunity in the Islamic world by intensifying ethnic difference and separating people under names such as 'Shia and Sunni', 'Arabs and non Arabs'. — Ali Khamenei

If people want to get into leadership through corrupt practices, through corrupt means, I think that's detestable; we have to take action. — Jakaya Kikwete

You get respect in society if you are aggressive. If you fight then people respect you. If you fight back, people like you for that as well. When Ive been beaten up, if Ive been in a pub doing nothing wrong, the fact I chose not to fight back, that I would never throw a punch back, people say Im weak. I dont think thats a weak thing at all. I think why should I descend to their level? If Ive done nothing wrong, throwing a punch back makes me as bad and corrupt as them. As evil as them, as stupid as them. — Richey Edwards

People endure what they endure and they deal with it. It may corrupt them. It may lead them into all sorts of compensatory excesses. — Dennis Potter

Like other corrupt people, he would never realize that his punishment was in missing out on what he didn't know he could have. — Guy Mankowski

Left-wing social policies sicken our behavior and corrupt our culture. People bend principles and sacrifice integrity to get as much as they can from the government. Giveaway programs encourage every imaginable sort of cheating and dishonesty. Wheeling and dealing in food stamps is a way of life. Lying and fraud are commonplace. Whenever you're dependent on the money, the end justifies the means. — James Cook

It takes a very very strong individual not to be corrupt in any of those things as time moves on. Myself and other people who went that road and experienced that world, some got a second birth of life and some is in the dirt. — Bernard Hopkins

To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be. — Henry George

I call on the Iranian people: it is not too late to replace the corrupt regime and return to your glorious Persian heritage, a heritage of culture and values and not of bombs and missiles ... How can a nation allow a regime to instill fear, take away the people's freedom and shock the young generation that seeks its way out of the dictatorial Iran. — Shimon Peres

Every human being wants to be seen, really seen, by another human being, not as a statistic in some sociological study, not as a casualty of poverty, not as a victim of a corrupt social structure. We can start by seeing both what is and what can be. — Nancy Rue

John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place which was making great computers for people to use. — Steve Jobs

exists. Why all these speeches and monuments. Tradition is the crown of the tyrant. I eye all the Golds in their badges and Sigils and standards, all worn to legitimize corrupt reign, and to alienate the people. Make them feel they watch a species beyond their comprehension. — Pierce Brown

the thing that will really change the world is not millions of people coming together in acts of retaliation against a corrupt system, but the individuals who learn to liberate themselves from the conditioning of their culture. A system no longer works if we choose to stop participating in it. — Joseph P. Kauffman

I think the media has become incredibly corrupt. We used to have a profound tradition of investigative journalism in the United States. Some journalists were real heroes, such as Bob Woodward who helped uncover the Watergate scandal. But today he is leading the opposite charge, trying to bring down the careers of people and score easy victories. In other words, those who used to bust the status quo have now become the status quo. — Marianne Williamson

The organized domestic terrorism of the general public is why many people regard the police as corrupt. — Steven Magee

Western police officers are an arguably corrupt group of people that have rigged the system to make them almost untouchable. — Steven Magee

My government is going to deal with all forms of corruption. White-collar corruption will be high on the list and we are going to plug all gaps that are being used by corrupt leaders (and) business people. — Jakaya Kikwete

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. — James Monroe

Money does not corrupt people. What corrupts people is lack of affection ... Money is simply the bandage which wounded people put over their wounds. — Margaret Halsey

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

Multiculturalism helps immigrants postpone the pain of letting go of the anachronistic and inappropriate. It locks people into corrupt, inefficient, and unjust social systems, even if it does preserve their arts and crafts. It perpetuates poverty, misery, and abuse. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad. — Aravind Adiga

Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we're sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don't know anybody nowadays who is not sincere. — Walker Percy

Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars, became common, while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent, affected supreme power under the seemly pretence of seeking the good of senate and people; citizens were judged good or bad, without reference to their loyalty to the republic (for all were equally corrupt); but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were esteemed good citizens, because they maintained the existing state of things. — Sallust

My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which men can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate. — Oscar Wilde

You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans: great, big, vulgar, bustling people more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt. — Harold Macmillan

When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude? — John Milton

People - pardon me, journalists and politicians - have often accused me of believing that I'm above the law. And yet, who isn't? Everywhere you prod it, even with the shortest stick, the established system isn't simply corrupt, it's unequivocally putrescent. The law is created by demonstrable criminals, enforced by demonstrable, interpreted by demonstrable criminals, all for demonstrably criminal purposes. Of course I'm above the law. And so are you. — L. Neil Smith

There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon. — Anton Chekhov

Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric, just as a contradiction can corrupt a system of logic, allowing falsehoods to proliferate through it. — Steven Pinker

The majority of the common people do not realize how corrupt the legal system has become until that blatant corruption shows up at their own homes. — Steven Magee

It takes a childish or corrupt imagination to make symbols of other people. — Tobias Wolff

I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God's word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become in the universities and what they are like now. — Martin Luther

Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history. — Noah Levine

Liberia got Petroleum (Oil): The problem of development lies in good leadership and great communication. Some of our leaders want to turn the country's oil company into the Gaddafi regime of Libya that they could rule Liberia and their sons and grand kids can also rule as well. It's a form of oppression. The Liberian people want a leader, not an oppressor or an installed puppet. Someone who will put the country and its peoples' interest first. Not a corrupt politician who's out to rip the country apart, in the name of enriching their families. — Henry Johnson Jr

Satan so vehemently despises what Christ has done for mortals that one of his chief objectives is to make the clean feel unclean. Oh, how he desires to stain the beautiful bride of Christ. Satan can't make the bride do anything, so he does everything he can to get her to. How is this best accomplished? He tries to corrupt thoughts to manipulate feelings. Satan knows that the nature of humankind is to act out of how we feel rather than what we know. One of our most important defenses against satanic influence will be learning how to behave out of what we know is truth rather than what we feel. Satan's desire is to modify human behavior to accomplish his unholy purposes. Second Timothy 2:26 tells us that Satan's objective in taking people captive is to get them to do his will. If we have received Christ as our Savior, Satan is forced to work from the outside rather than the inside. Thus, he manipulates outside influences to affect the inside decision-makers of the heart and mind. — Beth Moore

Summer has never been the same since the 2000 Presidential Election, when we still seemed to be a prosperous nation at peace with the world, more or less. Two summers later we were a dead-broke nation at war with all but three or four countries in the world, and three of those don't count. Spain and Italy were flummoxed and and England has allowed itself to be taken over by and stigmatized by some corrupt little shyster who enjoys his slimy role as a pimp and a prostitute all at once
selling a once-proud nation of independent-thinking people down the river and into a deadly swamp of slavery to the pimps who love Jesus and George Bush and the war-crazed U.S. Pentagon. — Hunter S. Thompson

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. — James A. Garfield

She still remembers the effect a certain book can have on people at the right time in their lives. A book, at its most mundane,can be a loaded gun. At its most powerful, it can split the trunk of a tree, mend a broken heart, heal the sick, and topple a corrupt government. — Don Borchert

Little had changed after independence. Jomo Kenyatta's face hung in a framed portrait in every shop where Queen Elizabeth's had been. Some schools were built, some streets renamed. But educated people are a liability in a dictatorship: all the schools were underfunded, few of them succeeded. A great deal of foreign money was given to the government and most of it ended up in the pockets of politicians, some of whom were assassinated. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the fatness of corrupt African politicians. — Paul Theroux

Much knowledge will corrupt the heart,/When partly understood,/And so the people grow too smart,/But neither wise nor good. — Laozi

Have not some religions, including the most influential forms of Christianity, taught that the heart of man is totally corrupt? How could the course of religion in its entire sweep not be marked by practices that are shameful in their cruelty and lustfulness, and by beliefs that are degraded and intellectually incredible? What else than what we can find could be expected, in the case of people having little knowledge and no secure method of knowing; with primitive institutions, and with so little control of natural forces that they lived in a constant state of fear? — John Dewey

ANYONE WHO HAS ever lived or worked in a corrupt dictatorship knows what happens. When the system is rigged, when ordinary citizens are powerless, and when whistle-blowers are pariahs at best, three things happen. First, the worst people rise to the top. They behave appallingly, and they wreak havoc. Second, people who could make productive contributions to society are incented to become destructive, because corruption is far more lucrative than honest work. And third, everyone else pays, both economically and emotionally; people become cynical, selfish, and fatalistic. Often they go along with the system, but they hate themselves for it. They play the game to survive and feed their families, but both they and society suffer. — Charles H. Ferguson

We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt. — Alex Steffen