Corruption Of Society Quotes & Sayings

The word corruption does not arouse the moral revulsion that it should. We think of it as more a nuisance than a great evil. But corruption kills societies every bit as much as murder kills an individual. Moreover there is no hope for any society in which corruption is endemic. One final thought: Here in Cameroon, as elsewhere in Africa, the knowledgeable guides who lead tours of the slave centers note that Africans were deeply involved in the slave trade, and that without them, the slave trade could not have existed. If only this fact were taught as readily in American universities as it is here in Africa - not in order to minimize white complicity, but because universities should teach truth. Flawed human nature has no color. — Dennis Prager

Fear is what created the monster in the room, and in order to overcome the many problems and enslavements that we have today, it is not about getting rid of the monster, but about getting rid of the fear. — Evita Ochel

I wholeheartedly support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people for a democratic, free and just society where the rule of law prevails without corruption or government violence directed against citizens. — Marcy Kaptur

Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject. — Edward Abbey

Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

In this way, the Church was a true reflection of the whole of Russian society. The KGB and the Russian people had penetrated each other to such an extent that they could not be separated. The culture of betrayal and suspicion and distrust that the KGB relied on had become part of the national culture, poisoning politics in the 1990s and beyond: decades of corruption, murder and sordid sex scandals. If it cannot purge itself, however, the Russian nation will never rid itself of the illness that has driven people to alcohol. Russians need to trust each other again. — Oliver Bullough

If experience teaches anything, it is that what the community undertakes to do is usually done badly. This is due in part to the temptation to corruption that such enterprises involve, but even more, perhaps, to the lack of personal interest on the part of those engaged in them. — Suzanne La Follette

In 1928, an Egyptian school teacher by the name of Hasan al-Banna, founded a society named the Muslim Brotherhood. This was a fundamentalist group dedicated to the reintroduction of traditional Islamic teachings (Koran and Sunnah) and law, (Sharia) to the Muslim world, and the forced imposition of Islamic rule over the whole world. Whilst they believed in the use of violence to achieve their goals, they understood that the West was too powerful to defeat in this way, and instead set about utilizing the other tactics of Jihad such as "Taquiya" or sacred deceit, corruption and infiltration. — Harry Richardson

Democracy in itself does not define or guarantee a free society. History has told many stories of democratic societies that have degenerated into corruption, plunder, and tyranny. — Richard Ebeling

Well, if I use Hispanic culture I get corruption and really good salsa music. If I use Chinese culture I get rigid thinking and decent Szechwan. If I use Islamic culture I get ... not damned much of anything. And ditto for Africa although at least the rhythm is good and you can dance to it. But if I use Western European Culture I get industry, higher standards of living, longer lifespans and a generally happier society. Damn, I think I'll just have to go with WesternCiv even if I do have to put up with the Lutherans. — John Ringo

Political leaders are reflection of our society. — Sukant Ratnakar

Historically the first philosopher to enquire deeply into the nature of corruption in society was Ibn Khaldun (1322-1406), whose wandering life was largely spent in the northern littoral of Africa at a time when kingdoms and sultanates were crumbling. — Robert Payne

The role of political leadership in any society will remain critical to the socio-economic progression of the world. It is however worrying to see the growing number of people, including the youth, getting into politics for economic gain and not for a cause. This, inter alia, is the contaminated seed and eventual root of chronic corruption because such leadership will always be selfishly seeking gain and enrichment from their roles and offices. — Archibald Marwizi

Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible. — Janice Rogers Brown

A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society. Succeed
that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption. — Victor Hugo

The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock. — Samuel Johnson

But now I understand something more fully that I once only understood abstractly. I see how utterly ridiculous it is to think that the state can be the right means to help those who are poor or living at the margins of society. The state is their enemy, as it is for everyone else. — Jeffrey Tucker

-The very absence of the freedom to criticise against your own or any other government is all the more a reason to loudly shout-out for democracy! If that is wrong, Drew boldly went on, -then I would rather be wrong then to be numbered among the majority of the so-called righteous people whose only mandate seems to be controlling people. If a government is against its people expressing themselves, then that government is obviously hiding something criminal from its people and the world, and it is therefore afraid of being exposed and losing whatever power it has. — Andrew James Pritchard

Rude contact with facts chased my visions and dreams quickly away, and in their stead I beheld the horrors, the corruption, the evils and hypocrisy of society, and as I stood among them, a young wife, a great wail of agony went out from my soul. — Victoria Woodhull

A vibrant civil society can challenge those in power by documenting corruption or uncovering activities like the murder of political enemies. In democracies, this function is mostly performed by the media, NGOs or opposition parties. — Evgeny Morozov

Imagine a problem in psychology: to find a way of getting people in our day and age - Christians, humanitarians, nice, kind people - to commit the most heinous crimes without feeling any guilt. There is only one solution - doing just what we do now: you make them governors, superintendents, officers or policemen, a process which, first of all, presupposes acceptance of something that goes by the name of government service and allows people to be treated like inanimate objects, precluding any humane or brotherly relationships, and, secondly, ensures that people working for this government service must be so interdependent that responsibility for any consequences of the way they treat people never devolves on any one of them individually. — Leo Tolstoy

Many Africans succumb to the idea that they can't do things because of what society says. Images of Africa are negative - war, corruption, poverty. We need to be proud of our culture. — Dambisa Moyo

The lesson has already been learned with alcohol prohibition. We tried to engineer an alcohol-free society and ended up with huge criminal enterprises, government corruption, children lured into organized crime and random violence that took the lives of countless innocent people. — Kurt Schmoke

I don't have my finger on the pulse of corruption in China, but I think most people on the ground would say that as China was emerging from communism, it was a very regulated society, and therefore, it was very corrupt. But as they have deregulated the economy, there just aren't as many opportunities for people to be corrupt. — Clayton Christensen

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society - the farmers, mechanics, and laborers - who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. — Andrew Jackson

The difference between Middle Eastern and Western economic approaches can be seen even in their distinctive forms of corruption, from which neither society is exempt. In the West, one makes money in the market, and uses it to buy or influence power. In the East, one seizes power, and uses it to make money. — Bernard Lewis

Indeed, bribery, favoritism, and corruption in a great variety of forms were rampant not only in politics, but in all levels of society. — David McCullough

Lying and corruption are in the Iranian society in all sense of the world, and if you do research about married women, you see that a lot of them tell you they get a lot of enjoyment from breaking the rules of corruption, because just for the fact that they break the rules, it makes them oppose the system. — Bahman Ghobadi

If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government? — Victoria Claflin Woodhull

Come forward as servants of Islam, organize the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself. — Kenneth Tynan

No, but why is Croft that way?
Oh there are The Answers. He is that way because of the-corruption-of-the-society. He is that way because he is having problems of adjustment. It is because he is a Texan. It is because he has renounced God. He is that way because he was born that way, or because the Devil has claimed him for one of his own, or because the only woman he ever loved was untrue to him. — Norman Mailer

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. — Barack Obama

Messages of instant gratification leads to a corrupt society — Sunday Adelaja

Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck. — Theodore Roosevelt

We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.
Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menaechmus of talent, has one dupe,
history. — Victor Hugo

I'd been a child during the 1960s when women burned their bras and hundreds of thousands gathered in protests against the Vietnam War. As a climber, I've felt connected to a similar nonconformist culture, one opposed to society's increasing materialism, pollution and corruption. Our approach to the rock - clean, traditional climbing, with the least dependence on equipment - was an extension of this ethical viewpoint. — Lynn Hill

There are only two living American authors fully deserving of the Nobel Prize. One is Lewis Mumford. The other is Wallace Stegner, whose novels and essays provide us a comprehensive portrait of industrial society in all its glittering corruption and radiant evil. — Edward Abbey

Be present to those who, living in the midst of a society burdened by poverty and corruption, are broken in spirit, tempted to give up, to leave school and to live on the streets. — Pope Francis

Then again, given that human history appears to be defined by a succession of more or less corrupt ruling elites, and if we are to assume that such corruption (and its spread throughout society) is the mechanism by which a civilization attracts cosmic catastrophe, blaming and deposing the elite is a good solution. The problem, however, is that the underlying mechanism is not understood by the people, which means that they lack the knowledge that, if they are to prevent further destruction, they must, at all costs, prevent the establishment of any future corrupt elite. — Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Tyranny happens when a society turns against itself, with one part usurping the power of [the] whole and applying it to the exploitation of the rest. Corruption, or misdirection of public effort for private gain, is one common feature of tyranny.... Government through fear is another common feature of tyranny, since it it through fear that one part of society can induce the other to betray its own interests. — Matthew Stewart

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. — Carl Sagan

As for corruption, who's more corrupt - the seller or the buyer? And how corrupt does a society have to be when its citizens need to get high to escape their reality, at the cost of bloodshed and suffering of their neighbors? — Don Winslow

It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts ... nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo. — Raymond Chandler

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare ... it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. — Justin S. Holcomb

Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of; just as we call "money" not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass. — Michel De Montaigne

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. — Georges Bernanos

Compassion, acceptance and LOVE is the cure to MOST of the issues that plague this world. — Yvonne Pierre

State censorship presents itself as a bulwark between society and forces of subversion or moral corruption. To dismiss this account of its own motives by the state as insincere would be a mistake: it is a feature of the paranoid logic of the censoring mentality that virtue ... must be innocent, and therefore, unless protected, vulnerable to the wiles of vice. — J.M. Coetzee

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

You can not fight "RACISM" when the "MIND" is weak. You can't fight "INJUSTICE" or "CORRUPTION" when you're not a true follower of your soul. You can't fight "OPPRESSION" when you "THINK" and "ACT" like the oppressor. You can't become a "CHANGE" when you keep on accepting the same old results.You can't become a valuable source in society when you devalued your brothers and sisters from distant lands.

It is impossible to change America when you see foul practices at institutions and don't speak up because it is not affecting you. What affect others should affect you mentally and physically, be part of the "HUMAN RACE." Be your brother's/sister's keeper no matter what religion or race he or she is. Be the change that you want to see in America. — Henry Johnson Jr

And custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century - the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light - are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world; - in other words, — Victor Hugo

Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands ... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and ... provide for their own safety and security. — John Locke

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. — Thomas Jefferson

I am saying the same to Muslims in the global South, telling them: "Just ignore what is done." However, in the Southern countries they are not living in a comfortable society like you and me. They deal with unemployment, corruption, and surviving. For the majority of them, their religion is helping them survive. — Tariq Ramadan

You are the salt of the earth." Some modern teachers seem to think our Lord said, You are the sugar of the earth, meaning that gentleness and winsomeness without curativeness is the ideal of the Christian. Our Lord's illustration of a Christian is salt, and salt is the most concentrated thing known. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. It is a disadvantage to be salt. Think of the action of salt on a wound, and you will realize this. If you get salt into a wound, it hurts, and when God's children are amongst those who are "raw" towards God, their presence hurts. The person who is wrong with God is like an open wound, and when salt gets in it causes annoyance and distress and the person is spiteful and bitter. The disciples of Jesus in the present dispensation preserve society from corruption; the salt causes excessive irritation, which spells persecution for the saint. — Oswald Chambers

After all, a society with such an enlightened tolerance of corruption and savagery needed to bear down hard on minor offenses to convince itself that it still had standards. — Dean Koontz

When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing. You have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all of society. — Edward Brooke

I believe that much of the maladjustment in our societies is caused, not by malevolence and corruption, but simply by ignorance. — Gilbert Highet

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, we have been told that
the federal government has the answers to solve all of society's problems.
We have been promised, by supposedly serious men who have
sworn an oath before God and man, that if we just give Washington,
D.C., more of our money and more of our personal freedom, the
problems of poverty, illiteracy, racism, unemployment, crime, and
corruption will all be solved. Today, each and every one of these
problems is worse than it has ever been. The federal government and
its blood-sucking bureaucracies do not have a solution to the problem,
they are the problem. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Corruption, the greatest single bane of our society today. — Olusegun Obasanjo

The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature. Art education is the education of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling. — Susanne Katherina Langer

In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. — Frederick Seitz

When corruption is king, there is no accountability of leadership and no trust in authority. Society devolves to the basic units of family and self, to the basic instincts of getting what you can when you can, because you don't believe anything better will ever come along. And when the only horizon is tomorrow, how can you care about the kind of nation you are building for your children and your grandchildren? How can you call on your government to address what ails society and build stronger institutions? — Nuhu Ribadu

We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave society devoid of belief. — Jeff Miller

May be the power lies in the hands of the one who holds the gun ... so he just presses the trigger whenever the slightest streak of anger passes his mind ... and after a few haunting days he roams freely in the country without fear ..
and what about the one who faces the wrath and bears the bullets?
He leaves a movement behind ... but haven't such movements always been ephemeral?
Is death the price you need to pay to open the eyes of those who care but just for a couple of days? — Sanhita Baruah

Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them ... with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind, that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society, and that general fairness that cements mankind. — John Locke

Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! — Mary Wollstonecraft