Sarah Chayes Quotes

And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

The Government of Afghanistan could best be understood, not as a government at all, but as a vertically integrated criminal organization whose care activity was not in fact exercising the functions of a state, but of rather extracting resources for personal gain.

He is violating his oath of office.

There can be no compromise regarding corruption.

Anyone in a position of power is either corrupt or assumed to be corrupt, and the assumption of corruption is as bad as the reality of it.

I completely disagree if someone says that corruption of junior government officers should be overlooked.

Those who have the power and should be the most responsible are often the least responsible.

Some people are in positions of power, and when incentives go haywire, we are all human and it's easy to make mistakes. I am not saying everybody is Bernie Madoff.

But look, you did not have to be well versed in politics to know that some stupid things were going on. It is the counsel's job to stop them, and instead the coverup was created.

Corruption has its own motivations, and one has to thoroughly study that phenomenon and eliminate the foundations that allow corruption to exist.

The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.

Corruption never has been compulsory.

The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.

Things happened there that I don't think are the finest hours for anybody, whether it was a journalist, the legal system or, in that case of the political system, who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.

All institutions are prone to corruption and to the vices of their members.

Despite high profile examples of local authorities been tried, convicted, and sometimes even executed for corruption, many officials simply calculate that the payoff for malfeasance is worth the risk of being caught.

I don't think that anybody is worse than a public official who sells his office and corrupts others.

We must rid the country of corruption, cronyism and nepotism.

Corruption is the exchange of public benefits for private gain.

The temptation to misuse public policy is almost irresistible.

The whole system is bribery.

New York is having awful corruption scandals. The charges involve politicians acting in such an insanely stupid way, it shatters our longstanding confidence that taking money was the one thing they know how to do well.

Many government officials have very high moral standards at the beginning of their duties, but after a while some officials sway from the right path and easily fall into the temptation of bribery and fraud.

Tolerance of corruption, explicit and implicit, has made it impossible to govern…. We need absolute transparency of all the assets of government officials.

We've had corruption -- corruption doesn't exist only in Africa. Where there is a corruptee, there is a corrupter. Right? It's always a two-way process.