Robert Zoellick Quotes

New York... where people come for their Ph.D. in corruption.

If you talk about corruption, you can talk about a lot of things in life.

Issues to do with corruption, issues of how we can straighten out our state-owned enterprises, and how we deal with 'state capture' are issues that are on our radar screen.

Corruption is one of the greatest enemies of progress in our time. It is the cancer at the heart of so many of the world's problems.

No government functions without the grease of corruption.

Crime does not pay as well as politics.

We don't know what proportion of public funds is regularly lost to collusion and corruption. Is it 25 per cent? 30 per cent? We do know that a portion of these public funds are feeding organized crime.

In any country, corruption tends to increase when more respectable means of social advancement break down.

Behind every corrupt politician are 10-20 corrupt businessmen.

I see corruption as a mortal enemy for young democracies.

Today, there is a large scale corruption in Gujarat.

There is no part of the world where corruption is absolutely eliminated.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

Politics ruins the character.

Until we can fully grasp the extent of corruption and fraud involved in the administration of the Oil-for-Food program, and until the United Nations decides to cooperate in the investigation, no American taxpayer dollars should go to the United Nations.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

Some of the immediate causes of Jack Abramoff's troubles were some Indian elections that went bad for him.

Brazil has a lot of issues that are similar to a lot of countries in Latin America, but the dominant issue Brazil is dealing with is poverty and political corruption.

Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.

Most problems in poor countries are locally generated even though international factors do play a role.

I always assumed that everyone knew no country would ever be awarded a World Cup without pricey gifts exchanging hands under the tables.

I'm very interested in how corruption works - and it's not necessarily the way one might expect.

Legitimate institutions historically have been defenseless in the face of outright fraud.

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