Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero Quotes

The only way to have clean politics is to pay party district and city leaders as business executives.

History shows that more democracy is not a magic pill that will make institutionalized corruption will go away.

The only way to get rid of corruption in high places is to get rid of the high places.

We need clean candidates. Party A puts up a candidate and he is terribly corrupt. Party B puts up a candidate who is even more corrupt. There is no choice. So I have the Clean Candidate Campaign.

He [previous President Uribe] has criticized this government for unveiling a lot of corruption: he thinks it is an attack on his government. But I have said no, it is not an attack on his government, it is an attack on the corrupt people, and I will continue to do that.

Politicians are elected to do what is right, but too many are just doing what is right for the party.

We have a record for Nawaz Sharif but not the others. And judging by the record, it's pretty hard to be optimistic. His [Sharif's] previous governments were very corrupt and regressive in the policies pursued.

There is no more important task in Washington than cleaning up the culture of corruption. Yet the president - whose White House has become the cradle of Republican corruption - is not taking responsibility for the costs of that corruption.

This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.

I think the record shows that as Speaker, I have taken the lead in cleaning up politics.

I did not resign from politics because of Bofors. I resigned because I do not know how to play petty politics. I did not know back then and I don't know now either.

It is more important for Labour to raise the reputation of politics than for the Tories, who are only in politics for the money.

Voters definitely believe Washington is corrupt - but most think it's bipartisan.

We're not going to have another Watergate in our lifetime. I'm sure.

If a large city can, after intense intellectual efforts, choose for its mayor a man who merely will not steal from it, we consider it a triumph of the suffrage.

And I think after the history of this first term is written and you look back, you're going to see that compared to other administrations or by any other standard you'd want to apply, that it has been an extraordinarily clean, corruption-free administration because the President [Nixon] insists on that.

There are extremely few places in the world where the citizens believe their political leaders will be punished if they disobey the law.

The United States owe it to the world as well as to themselves to let the example of one government at least protect against the corruption which prevails.

The moral element … ministers, professors, and respectable persons … do not believe politics should be pursued as a trade.

Both Republicans and Democrats are corrupt. The motto of the Democratic Party is, "Anything to get in." The motto of the Republican Party is "Anything to stay in.

Donations to political parties, candidates and elected officials should not be a means to gain personal or policy favours or buy access to politicians or civil servants…. Political parties, candidates and politicians should disclose assets, income and expenditure to an independent agency.

Government ought to be all outside and no inside.... Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.

Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.

I'm a politician who's against corruption that Putin has done in our country.

Political corruption is eating our democracy out from the inside. Most Americans know that. But democratic and economic health can't be easily disentangled.