Kleptocracy Government Quotes & Sayings

For me, growing up in Detroit, scarves meant cold weather. But I remember working in a store, and we had some silk scarves - like, wide scarves with fringe - and because I had seen the English rockers wearing skinny silk scarves, I took the scarves, cut and sewed them, and made them long - almost like a tie. — John Varvatos

A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends. — Christopher Hitchens

I could no more lie without noticing it than I could unknowingly pass a kidney stone. — Kurt Vonnegut

The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. — L. Neil Smith

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. — Mark Gevisser

I'm very happy where I am: I'm a senator from Ohio. — Rob Portman

In the story of the prince and the frog, there's always a frog. This story ... it has no frog. — Anne Rice

I never worked in an office in my life. — Jack Vance

A man who doesn't make you feel special, wanted or important would make a very poor husband. — Jeanne Phillips

What is taking place here should be made very clear: Citizens who are completely innocent of any legal wrongdoing and simply minding their own business--not seeking any litigation and neither convicted nor accused of any legal infraction, criminal or civil--are ordered into court and told to write checks to officials of the court or they will be summarily arrested and jailed, Judges also order citizens to sell their houses and other property and turn the proceeds over to lawyers and other cronies they never hired. Summoning legally unimpeachable citizens to court and forcing them to empty their bank accounts to people they have not hired for services they have neither requested nor received on threat of physical punishment is what most people would call a protection racket. . . Yet family court judges do this as a matter of routine. This is by far the clearest example of what we political scientists term a "kleptocracy," or government by theives. — Stephen Baskerville

Our society had been a kleptocracy of the highest order, the government doing its best to steal from the Americans, the average man doing his best to steal from the government, the worst of us doing our best to steal from each other. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

I've discovered that the less I say, the more rumors I start. — Bobby Clarke

I'm very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There's no way that you can close the frontiers anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently. — Isabel Allende

For five years he [Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)] served as personal secretary to, yes, Francis Bacon. In fact, I've noted over a course of years that the job of a secretary can be utterly fulfilling just in case one's boss happens to be Francis Bacon. — Daniel N. Robinson

Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven. — Lao-Tzu

There's no need to legalize gay marriage. I have plenty of gay friends who are committed couples; some of them call themselves married, some don't, but their friends treat them as married. Anybody who doesn't like it just doesn't hang out with them. — Orson Scott Card

I'm blown away by the graphical detail of today's games. I can't imagine that it's going to get any better, but it's just going to continually progress and soon we'll be living in that world. — Christian Slater