Corrupt Influence Quotes

Power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

There are, perhaps, few men who can for any length of time enjoy office and power without being more or less under the influence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of their political duties.

There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.

It is impossible to reign innocently.

As a young man, you're dazzled by the power of the White House and all that. But power tends to corrupt.

[The spirit of party] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.

The rotten apple spoils his companion.

We have a cancer within, close to the Presidency, that is growing. It is growing daily.

The people who I serve believe that the means by which I came to office corrupt me.

A contract to bribe or corruptly influence officers of a foreign government will not be enforced in the courts of this country

A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.

Gangsters lived in the neighborhood. They weren't apart from it. Their relationships with people were both benevolent and scary.

If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.

Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.

If parents would have their children blessed at church and school, let them beware they give their children no corrupt examples at home by any carelessness, profaneness or ungodliness. Otherwise, parents will do them more harm at home than both pastors and schoolmasters can do them good abroad.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.

It is criminal negligence to leave suckers lying around to tempt honest men.

Power is all. Another falsification; I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.

The Sun visits cesspools without being defiled.

The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.

Power tempts even the best of men to take liberties with the truth.

That which is won ill, will never wear well, for there is a curse attends it, which will waste it; and the same corrupt dispositions which incline men to the sinful ways of getting, will incline them to the like sinful ways of spending.

After all that corrupt poets, and more corrupt philosophers, have told us of the blandishments of pleasure, and of its tendency to soften the temper and humanize the affections, it is certain, that nothing hardens the heart like excessive and unbounded luxury; and he who refuses the fewest gratifications to his own voluptuousness, will generally be found the least susceptible of tenderness for the wants of others.