Sam Ervin Quotes

Our representatives are betrayers of the people.

I wouldn't trust [Richard] Nixon from here to that phone.

People don't trust government, they don't trust Wall Street, they don't trust the church, they don't trust the media.

Politicians are so detested. And the main cause is not policy; it's the fact that there is no trust.

In the Prime Minister, we have a man who has forfeited the right to be believed or to be trusted.

… a lying crook in the Presidency

You roll back the stones and you find the slithering things of the world of Richard Nixon.

People don't trust anything anymore. We don't trust our government. We don't trust our automobile makers. We don't trust our pharmaceutical houses. We don't trust our doctors or our hospitals or our cops. We don't trust Congress. And a lot of Americans don't trust the president of the U.S. So the media are simply regarded as another piece of the American establishment. People think we're trying to get away with something, trying to pull the wool over their eyes, trying to push an agenda..

If I had to use a single word to describe what is fundamentally wrong with government today, I would use the word fraud.

The fundamental challenge is that people like me simply do not trust the federal government any longer.

There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.

I was a guy who trusted the government. Now, I don't trust a damn thing they do.

Public trust in both government and corporations is low, and deservedly so.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

Whether I'm reading a national publication or one of my local Chicago newspapers, I don't need to turn too many pages before I stumble upon another scandal. Not only do ethics violations deteriorate the public trust, but they also disrupt and undermine legitimate debate and policy.

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

I'm tired of being lied to by government, by the media, and by every corporation I have anything to do with.

He [Richard M. Nixon] told us he was going to take crime out of the streets. He did. He took it into the damn White House.

… J. Edgar Hoover, whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with a silencer on its rattle.

As I watched some of the Watergate hearings I kept asking myself what all these people—[John] Dean and others—were doing there in the first place. Was there really an honest job that needed doing?

The establishment of Washington is utterly corrupt and is incapable of governing.

Our citizens do not know whom to believe, and many of them have concluded that all the processes of government have become so compromised that honest government has been rendered impossible.

We can be lied to only so many times. The best thing that he [President Nixon] can do for the country is to get the hell out of the White House and get out this afternoon.

Certainly he [Richard M. Nixon] is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy.