Corruption

"All bad precedents began as justifiable measures."
        --Gaius Julius Caesar

"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."
        --Simon Cameron

"Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming."
        --Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"At Waco, was there really an urgency to get those people out of the compound at that particular time? Was the press going to make it look heroic for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? At Ruby Ridge, there was one guy in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Was it necessary for federal agents to go up there and shoot a 14-year-old in the back and shoot a woman with a child in her arms? What kind of mentality does that?"
        --Clint Eastwood, Parade Magazine, 01/12/97

"Corruption is no stranger to Washington; it is a famous resident."
        --Walter Goodman

"Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends."
        --Walter Lippmann

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators."
        --P.J. O'Rourke

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
        --Ronald Reagan

"If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives."
        --Will Rogers

"No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse."
        --Theodore Roosevelt

"Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse."
        --Adlai E. Stevenson

"The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
        --Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC [also attributed to Socrates]

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
        --Cornelius Tacitus