Graft Quotes

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Corruption was not merely political; it was financial, commercial, social.

History will remember the UPA-II government for its numerous scandals, scams, and corruption, probably the maximum number ever.

PUBLIC SERVANT: Persons chosen by the people to distribute the graft.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - 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.

Foreign aid breeds kleptocracies, or governments of thieves.

Mr. Ten Percent

The new political gospel: public office is private graft.

The grocer, the butcher, the baker, the merchant, the landlord, the druggist, the liquor dealer, the policeman, the doctor, the city father and the politicians—these are the people who make money out of prostitution.

Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop what it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left a trail of graft and slime, It don't prohibit worth a dime, It's filled our land with vice and crime. Nevertheless, we're for it.

... he [Thomas E. Dewey] is a political streetwalker accosting men with "come home with me dear.

The building of the transcontinental railroads resulted in an orgy of political corruption. The public lands and the natural resources of coal, of iron, and of timber were lavishly wasted in the great scramble for wealth and material power. The carnival of waste and plunder reached its climax about 1890. Evidences were abundant that the great business interests of the country were controlling the government for their own private benefit. The capitalists who financed the railroads, mines, mills, packing houses, grain elevators, and other great enterprises, received from Congress favors which destroyed competition and enormously increased private fortunes.

I cannot consent to act the part of a mere financier, to become a contriver of taxes, a dealer of loans, a seeker of resources for the purposes of supporting useless baubles, of increasing the number of idle and dissipated members of the community, of fattening contractors, pursers, and agents, and of introducing … patronage, corruption, and rottenness which you so justly execrate.

There's an awful lot of corruption in Japanese business and politics, corruption of the sort that can make for great setting for a spy story.

Getting an advantage at the expense of somebody else—that really is what graft is.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

I don't think anyone has ever been corrupted by a T-shirt.

If you're cutting deals with one company or another, eventually, there's going to be a quid pro quo. There's going to be a bribe. There's going to be something.

Honest Graft

Six "social sins" which Jesus bore on the Cross: Religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit and mob action, militarism, and class contempt.

As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.

The hardest way to make a million dollars is to become a United States senator. Any vicious, impudent, brazen, shrewd, gifted person can think of an infinite number of better ways to become rich than to become a crooked politician.

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

Where the grifter is shameless, the grafter shrinks from exposure, which could only endanger the racket. He is greedy but not creatively ambitious. He toils in mundane self-dealing, insider trading, bribe taking, witness tampering, and other forms of workaday corruption.