Julian Assange Quotes

You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that. But you can take him to a fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser - and have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.

People like Elizabeth Dole have given too much power to the special interests.

Eventually, money wins in politics.

A $5,000 campaign contribution to a member of Congress will hardly get you a thank you these days.

Money in politics leads to bad things—and I am bipartisan in that view.

Politicians can be bought and often are.

Congressmen are not bribed anymore. They simply have a lot of friends who are willing to help them out whenever they find it necessary.

Money speaks louder than words in Washington.

Congress has become the center of legalized bribery/

This [political fundraising] is a very sophisticated system … This is a legalized bribery system where no one has to say anything. I don’t have to say what I want—you [the politician] know what I want.

The structure of private campaign finance has essentially pre-corrupted our politicians, so that they can't even recognize explicit bribery because it feels the same as what they do every day.

When these political action committees give money, they expect something in return other than good government.

Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved.

I have the most reliable friend you can have in American politics, and that is ready money.

Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics, not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.

Well, the role of money in politics is pretty corrupting right now.

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

America has the best congress money can buy.

The principal reasons that special interests can extract their price from government is money .... Those who do not accept money from PACs are those who have other sources.

Special interests and Congress are too closely connected and the ties that bind are the millions spent on campaigns.

Money in politics is like ants in your kitchen. You close all the holes and get them all out or they'll find their way in again.

Money distorts the democratic process in a fundamental way.

It challenges a linguist to define modern campaign contributions as something other than bribery.