Quotes & Sayings About Graft And Corruption

Saigonese corruption was incapacitating, a malignancy that poisoned the entire system of government. Graft was the main preoccupation of those on the Saigon side, Vann learned, absorbing more time and thought than any other concern and summoning considerable ingenuity from people who were incompetent at the task they were supposed to perform. — Anonymous

Part of my mandate is to curb corruption and streamline a cumbersome, graft-ridden bureaucracy, to put resources where they will provide the clearest results, and to untangle a complicated regulatory environment. — Benigno Aquino III

As more money flowed through Washington and as Washington's power to regulate our lives grew, opportunities and temptations for graft, influence peddling and cutting corners grew exponentially. Power breeds corruption. — Steve Forbes

The only decent daily paper of record in France is the online 'Mediapart,' which exposes graft and corruption in high places and is feared by the establishment. — Tariq Ali

I am, in general, favourable to activism and social movements and hostile to graft and corruption. — Tariq Ali

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

Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them? — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Others, however, perhaps overwhelmed by what they read, say Africa should be written off, that it's beyond repair. My experiences so far say we should put it in perspective. For instance, a new nation that has just won its independence from a colonial power struggles with internal graft and corruption, civil war and economic turbulence - more developed nations see it as a basket-case. Yet 200+ years later it emerges as the world's sole superpower. Yes, America. — Kevin Sites

No doubt, what with all that graft and corruption filling your schedule. — Rob Thomas

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed. — Ayn Rand

Sexual orthodoxy and the exercise of power. If a President can't keep his pants on, does he lose the right to rule us? If a public servant cheats on his wife does this make him more likely to cheat on the electorate? For myself, I'd rather be ruled by an adulterer, by some sexual rogue, than by a prim celibate or zipped-up spouse. As criminals tend to specialize in certain crimes, so corrupt politicians normally specialize in their corruption: the sexual blackguards stick to fucking, the bribe-takers to graft. In which case it would make more sense to elect proven adulterers instead of discouraging them from public life. I — Julian Barnes

In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance. — Barbara Tuchman