Edmund Burke Quotes

Flattery in courtship is the highest insolence, for whilst it pretends to bestow on you more than you deserve, it is watching an opportunity to take from you what you really have.

The first sign of corruption in a society ... is that the ends justify the means.

It takes two to corrupt – the corrupted and the corrupter.

Life is a racket. Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything's a racket.

All flatterers live at the expense of those who listen to them.

To plunder, to lie, to show your ass, are the three essentials for climbing high.

If you do not know how to lie, cheat and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.

They lied, they cheated, they stole, they had the power to do it and they did.

Politics is so corrupt that even the dishonest people get fucked.

Nearly everyone who chooses to work for Donald Trump is disreputable in one way or another; Ali Baba didn't find 40 wise men in the cave. But to label everyone in Trumpworld a grifter misses important subtleties. It conflates grifters and grafters, and it ignores the crucial distinction between the two.

Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.

Learn that every flatterer Lives at the flattered listeners cost.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.

Fraud is the ready minister of injustice.

In Hollywood people lie to each other and cheat each other and then go and play tennis. But I don't want to be a tennis player.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who ne'er loved them.

Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.

Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it.

You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.

The corruption of people is to behave in an inhuman way.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Corruption never has been compulsory.

I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your efforts to believe it.