Top 25 Corruption Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

— Lord Acton

Also featured in: Government Quotes

2. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”

— Lord Acton

Also featured in: Exercise Quotes, Government Quotes

3. “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Also featured in: Justice Quotes

4. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

— George Orwell

Also featured in: Human Nature Quotes

5. “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Wise Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Important Quotes

6. “Greed is permanent slavery.”

— Ali ibn Abi Talib

Also featured in: Quotes About Greed

7. “The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.”

— Kurt Cobain

Also featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Challenges Quotes, Truth Quotes

8. “They Have Money For War But Can’t Feed The Poor.”

— Tupac Shakur

Also featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Quotes About Humanity, Artist Quotes

9. “A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.”

— Chanakya

10. “Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed.”

— Mwai Kibaki

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Impact Quotes, Opportunity Quotes, Smart Quotes, Responsibility Quotes

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

— Upton Sinclair

12. “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”

— Elena Gorokhova

Also featured in: Liars Quotes

13. “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

— Plato

Also featured in: Government Quotes

14. “Avoid him who talks sweetly before you but tries to ruin you behind your back, for he is like a pitcher of poison with milk on top.”

— Chanakya

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Strategy Quotes, Human Nature Quotes, Quotes About Trust

15. “When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Sacrifice Quotes, Honesty Quotes, Government Quotes

16. “If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes

17. “The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.”

— Aristotle

18. “Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.”

— Edward Abbey

19. “Corruption is a cancer that steals from the poor, eats away at governance and moral fibre and destroys trust.”

— Robert Zoellick

20. “Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. ”

— George Washington

21. “One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.”

— Thomas Sowell

Also featured in: Quotes About Trust

22. “Politicians promise you heaven before an election and give you hell after.”

— Emma Goldman

Also featured in: Liars Quotes, Disappointment Quotes, Heaven Quotes

23. “When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

— Frédéric Bastiat

24. “If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain.”

— George Carlin

Also featured in: Democracy Quotes, Complaining Quotes

25. “I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.”

— Sophocles

26. “My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.”

— George Carlin

Also featured in: Hilarious Quotes, Firsts Quotes, Government Quotes, Doubt Quotes

27. “You know it’s funny, when it rains it pours they got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor.”

— Tupac Shakur