Quotes & Sayings About Corrupt System

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

Look, the communists have tried to corrupt our education system. They've tried to corrupt any number of institutions. Why wouldn't they try to corrupt the Catholic Church? It is a big enemy. — Rush Limbaugh

They call me corrupt, frivolous. I am not at all privileged. Maybe the only privileged thing is my face. And corrupt? God! I would not look like this if I am corrupt. Some ugliness would settle down on my system. — Imelda Marcos

We overestimate the power of people who become cogs in giant organizations. The fact that they become cogs actually limits what they can do ... There's something very corrupting that happens to people who think they're going to work from inside a corrupt system. — Howard Zinn

I do not know that the Chinese system is any worse; there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may together do as much injustice or more, and be the less easy to uproot. — Naomi Novik

Super PACs and a corrupt campaign finance system are destroying American democracy. We're proud that we have received four million individual contributions, more than any candidate in American history at this point. — Bernie Sanders

It is very clear that the present system of innovation for medicines is very inefficient and really somewhat corrupt. It benefits shareholders over patients; it produces for the rich markets and not for the poor and does not produce for minority diseases. — John Sulston

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

I realized that the legal system was corrupt when I went to court and the judge imposed a very short time limit on my evidence submission before removing my legal rights to free speech. — Steven Magee

Who is an aam aadmi? AAP believes that the middle class is part of the aam aadmi, anyone who is tired of this corrupt system is aam aadmi. — Arvind Kejriwal

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

People keep saying someone should fix the system, the
system is corrupt. What they don't get is; they are the system. It's just like how people hate
McDonald's and Coca Cola. People say they are evil corporations, terrorists and ruining the
health of the future but then, how are these brands live and running all over the world,
making billions of dollars of profit every day? People still buy it, that's how. The majority of
the world is people who know something is bad for them but keep consuming it. If it's so
bad for you, why buy it? If the system is so bad, why do they vote for it? It's the people who
need to change not the leaders. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

Without integrity, secrecy can become a license for opportunists to distort and corrupt the system. — Monika Jensen-Stevenson

Organic farming is about buying out of a corrupt, illegal and dishonest system. — Jerry Brown

Islam is a system given by God and it aims to establish a fundamental principle of God's sovereignty and people's servitude to Him alone," Qutb wrote. "As such, Islam has the right to remove all obstacles from its way and address people freely without any impediments such as a political system or social customs and traditions . . . it is the right of Islam to take the initiative. It is not the creed of a particular people or the system of a particular country. It is a system given by God for the entire world. As such, it has the right to take action to remove all obstacles that fetter man's freedom of choice. It is a faith that does not force itself on any individual, it only attacks situations and regimes in order to free individuals from deviant influences that corrupt human nature and restrict man's freedom. — Mark Bowden

In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic papacy developed into an abusive, corrupt, autocratic, totalitarian system by claiming apostolic authority through a supposed line of succession back to Peter. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

By incentivizing Wall Street players to sniff out inefficient or corrupt companies and bet against them, short-selling acts as a sort of policing system; legal short-sellers have been instrumental in helping expose firms like Enron and WorldCom. — Matt Taibbi

Savers have to be punished so debtors can be saved.

Why? Because if debtors are rescued, that makes it possible for more debts to be issued in the future.

And why is that important? Because the banking system needs ever more loans in order to survive. — Chris Martenson

Peace is not the norm; peace is rare, and where we do manage to institutionalize it in a human society, it's usually because we've been intelligently pessimistic about human proclivities, and found a way to work with the grain of them in a system of intense mutual suspicion like the U.S. Constitution, a document which assumes that absolutely everybody will be corrupt and power-hungry given half a chance. — Francis Spufford

If you cloned JFK and Abraham Lincoln and made them president it wouldn't matter. Our system is just too corrupt and too broken. I think that science is corrupt and broken. I think health and nutrition. I think the economic systems, the international relations, the environment, everything, the engines of everything are broken. — Rainn Wilson

Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think ...
I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.
However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed. — Peter Rollins

They kill people here who stand up for their rights The system's just too damned corrupt It's always the same, the name of the game Is who do you know higher up — Bob Dylan

We have to change the system. The system is very rotten. The executive is corrupt, the Congress is corrupt, the judiciary is corrupt ... So what's left We really have to have a radical and surgical change to bring back the image of our country. — Joseph Estrada

When the new heart given to us through Jesus Christ in the New Covenant becomes corrupt, it is because of a stronghold that has been established and the root is bringing forth its corruption, and not because of sin springing up within it intrinsically (Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:26-27; II Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 4:6; Romans 5:5). Scripturally, I am convinced there is nothing in the regenerate heart of the New Covenant believer that produces sin, for the old man Adamic geyser of corruption was slain with Christ on Calvary (Romans 6:6). The desires of the flesh, however, still live. The flesh has been hopelessly conditioned in Adam and is conducive to the satanic attraction of the world's system (Ephesians 2:2). It is God's decree therefore that we collaborate with Him in the mortifying of its affections and lusts (Galatians 5:24; Colossians 3:5; Romans 7:18; 8:13; 13:14). — Paul West

American society [ ... ] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property
on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success. — Philip Roth

Here the system is creating an industry around the drug issue when it does nothing to stop the corrupt military that moves the drugs, and the big banks that are all in cahoots with the President and the big shots in the Congress. — Jerry Brown

PACs corrupt the system. They handle vast amounts of money and the money corrupts. — Paul Ryan

Americans had become lazy and irresponsible, focused on the pursuit of sex, money, and pleasures, unwilling to sacrifice and prepare for the obvious threats all around them. What fools to think "Guns, Germs and Steel" would no longer shape human history. For decades they partied at the Coliseum, enjoying the games and government handouts, the illusion of a protected empire. Sedated with unconstitutional entitlements. Freed from responsibility by a pandering political system, a corrupt culture, and professional soldiers who kept the wolves at bay. — Drew Miller

Modern value-neutral society (Gesellschaft rather than Gemeinschaft) is systematized predation tempered not by conscience or values but rather merely by a system of law, which is no less corrupt with private interests and its own forms of predation. In modernity sophism is the order of the day, and this obliges its most adept practitioners to learn how to develop the art of appearing to be other than one actually is. — Kenny Smith

Goldman Sachs was one of those companies whose illegal activity helped destroy our economy and ruin the lives of millions of Americans. But this is what a rigged economy and a corrupt campaign finance system and a broken criminal justice is about. These guys are so powerful that not one of the executives on Wall Street has been charged with anything after paying, in this case of Goldman Sachs, a $5 billion fine. — Bernie Sanders

Many original occupiers believe the political system has become so corrupt that even participating in it, engaging with it, corrupts the movement. I understand what they are saying. But often, change does come more quickly from the inside rather than the outside. My advice: try both. But don't try violence. — Jennifer Granholm

The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. — Bruce Sterling

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state. — John Ralston Saul

If you work through the existing structures you are going to be corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even nowadays in the US, where people on the "Left" are all caught in the electoral campaign and get into fierce arguments about should we support this third party candidate or that third party candidate. This is a sort of little piece of evidence that suggests that when you get into working through electoral politics you begin to corrupt your ideals. — Howard Zinn

Virtually every politician portrayed in film or on television over the last decade has been venal, corrupt, opportunistic, cynical, if not worse. Whether these dramatized images are accurate or exagerated matters little. The corporatist system wins either way: directly through corruption and indirectly through the damage done to the citizen's respect for the representative system.
(III - From Corporatism to Democracy) — John Ralston Saul

Innocence so constantly finds itself in a false position that inwardly innocent people learn to be disingenuous. Finding no language to speak in their own terms they resign themselves to being translated imperfectly. They exist alone; when they try and enter into relations they compromise falsifyingly- through anxiety, through desire to impart and to feel warmth. The system of our affections is too corrupt for them. They are bound to blunder, then to be told they cheat...Their singleness, their ruthlessness, their one continuous wish makes them bound to be cruel, and to suffer cruelty. — Elizabeth Bowen

The guiding principle of my life, 'the means are the ends,' has taught me that our participation in a corrupt system facilitates it and corrupts and therefore defeats us. — Sonia Johnson

The system failed not because it was rational, but because rational choice in the face of massive ignorance - whether attributable to folly or deceit - is meaningless. Capitalism depends not on the freedom to choose but on the free flow of information across a low-entropy carrier. Corrupt the carrier with noise, and capitalism collapses. And the great corrupter of any carrier, the great generator of destructive noise, is power. And in this case the powers assembled were immense. — George Gilder

When a plutocracy is disguised as a democracy, the system is beyond corrupt. — Suzy Kassem

The deep problem with the system was a kind of moral inertia. So long as it served the narrow self-interests of everyone inside it, no one on the inside would ever seek to change it, no matter how corrupt or sinister it became - though even to use words like "corrupt" and "sinister" made serious people uncomfortable, and so Brad avoided them. — Michael Lewis

You can call it institutionalized racism or institutionalized inequality, but what I say is that any system that operates to maintain inequality is a corrupt system and must be addressed. — Robert D Bullard

[Two respondents] minimized the assimilationist implications of the dominant account; Russ Silver rejects the idea entirely.
I have no interest in being accepted. I consider this system corrupt, and I don't want to be accepted by it. We're in this together. Faggots, junkies, women, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, don't you see it? Don't you see that our white male government doesn't care about us? When I say this it shocks coat-and-tie lesbians and gay men everywhere. Well, I'm sorry, folks; if you had AIDS you would know what I know: The government doesn't give a goddamn cent for a faggot's life. — Vera Whisman

The second hallmark of the stationary state was the ability of a corrupt and monopolistic elite to exploit the system of law and administration to their own advantage: In a country too, where, though the rich or the owners of large capitals enjoy a good deal of security, the — Niall Ferguson

[American family court] is a system that is corrupt on his best day. It is like being tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged down a gravel late at night. No one can hear your cries and complaints and it is not over until they say it's over. — Alec Baldwin

There's something that's so basically corrupt about any system in which a good and fair profit is not enough. There has to be more, every year, every quarter, because your stock price has to rise. — Paul Haggis

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

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

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

In a pure capitalist system, an institution as moronic and corrupt as Bank of America would be swiftly punished by the market - the executives would get to loot their own firms once, then they'd be looking for jobs again. — Matt Taibbi

Russian literature saved my soul. When I was a young girl in school and I asked what is good and what is evil, no one in that corrupt system could show me. — Irina Ratushinskaya

Nothing threatens a corrupt system like a free mind. — Suzy Kassem

The whole f**king system is corrupt. — Frank Serpico

We need to reject evil and embrace our faith-whatever it may be. We need to remind ourselves about how things used to be-how it should be. Only by informing others, can we defeat this corrupt system of organized chaos. Remember, everything that is happening now was planned long ago, and it is all happening for a specific purpose. The insane policies that are being made have never been about keeping us safe from terrorists; nor have they been about preserving freedom of speech, or just plain freedom. One thing is for certain: it is not about God, nor is it about Grandma or "apple pie". It is all about money and power and control-plain and simple. — Cass Swenson

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

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

There is nothing that threatens a corrupt system more than a free mind. — Suzy Kassem

The corrupt system made the ordinary citizen absolutely powerless and without rights — Sunday Adelaja

Do not blame people and their attitudes: the problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt. The solution is not, "Main Street, not Wall Street," but to change the system where Main Street cannot function without Wall Street. — Slavoj Zizek

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

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

If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system. — Samuel Johnson

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. — Peter Joseph

They had a much more fundamental problem with the market: greed. Market motives were held to be inherently corrupt. The moment that greed was validated and unlimited profit was considered a perfectly viable end in itself, this political, magical element became a genuine problem, because it meant that even those actors - the brokers, stock-jobbers, traders - who effectively made the system run had no convincing loyalty to anything, even to the system itself. — David Graeber

Nobody of sound mind can dispute that there is something fundamentally wrong, and intrinsically corrupt, about a legal system that encourages police officers and prosecutors to do everything in their power to persuade you and your children (no matter how young or old) to "do the right thing" and talk - when they tell their own children the exact opposite. I — James Duane

We may wonder how the ability to profit from land fosters social dysfunction, but once we realize the extent to which community wealth is privatized for personal gain, we also come to realize just how corrupt most societies actually are. Many social problems exist as a result of how our system misallocates wealth, not as a result of an unalterable human condition. — Martin Adams

There's issue of a corrupt campaign finance system, where big money interests and Wall Street are trying to buy elections.Those are the issues that are resonating. — Bernie Sanders

The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning. — George Orwell

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

The incapable educational system, my mother and I were embroiled in a vicious cycle of negativity. We all suffered greatly because we were all products of an inexperienced, underdeveloped and misunderstood thought process inherited from a completely corrupt and unjust educational system. I was unloved by my peers because I'd inherited an attitude of fear, pessimism and negativity that could have simply been avoided if our system recognised that we are all products of our environment and have subsequently come from different places, perspectives and circumstances. — K.A. Hill

There is nothing I love more than helping someone realize how corrupt our food system is and them making great changes in their own life because of it. — Kristin Cavallari

The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done. — Lawrence Lessig

You know, sometimes a thing, a system, a creation grows so old, and corrupt, and weighed down by its own baggage, that all you can do is change it. Move on. Start afresh. It's frightening, but it has to be done. — Philip Reeve

Under the all-encompassing aid system, too many places in Africa continue to flounder under inept, corrupt and despotic regimes who spend their time courting and catering to the demands of the army of aid organizations. — Dambisa Moyo