Al Alvarez Quotes

I'll do anything for $50. People are always trying to get me to do dumb things. The possibilities are endless.

American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.

Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money.

I don't understand it. Jack will spend any amount of money to buy votes but he balks at investing a thousand dollars in a beautiful painting.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

One only needs a big enough bribe to give in like a lamb.

I can buy any man in the world.

In any single "first-class" hotel in Washington, at any time during midsession, at least half a dozen of these lobbyesses are thus at work at once, each one roping in her dozen or ten of wild-cat Congressmen. The lever of lust is used to pry up more legislators to the sticking point than money itself avails to seduce.

Ecclesiastical honors are either purchased for a set price, or seized by the hand of violence, or secured by nefarious actions, or acquired by sordid sycophancy. Occasionally even, they are the hire paid for panderism and similar services. In short, more shameless proceedings are exhibited here than ever occur in the acquisition of secular possessions.

We corrupt the word of truth, and mix ... our doctrine with what is common and cheap... in order to turn the adulteration to our profit, and accommodate ourselves to those who meet us, and curry favor with everyone, becoming ventriloquists and chatterers, who serve their own pleasures by words uttered from the earth, and sinking into the earth, and, to gain the special good will of the multitude

When you have an almost unlimited amount of money, you can pay people to do almost anything.

Dictators have the power and funds to hire sycophants who encourage them in their delusions.

Whenever there is money, power, and titles involved, players are going to be corrupt. That might be a political statement, but that's what it is for the athletes, too.

You dangle a little bit of change in front of somebody and what do they do? They change right up like a chameleon.

O sin, how you paint your face! how you flatter us poor mortals on to death! You never appear to the sinner in your true character; you make fair promises, but you never fulfil one; your tongue is smoother than oil, but the poison of asps is under your lip!

When sincerity fails, the offer of money usually works.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.

These devils find a way to get at'cha. All it takes is some green and your face on the screen.

Money corrupts the process of reasoning.

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

Lying about things large and small has become so accepted by so many that they even lie about lying.

We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves And spend our flatteries to drink those men Upon whose age we void it up again With poisonous spite and envy.

I think that if you can butter writers up enough, they might give you a little.