Thomas Paine Quotes

I'm not going to reduce the choices of Canadians at the ballot box by backroom deals or secret arrangements. I think that's a cause for cynicism more than anything else.

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.

I treat politics kind of like my religion. It's something I believe in, but I don't want to have to make a living at it, because if you make a living at it, you somehow become dishonest.

Ten years ago if you would have told me that Mrs. Clinton would be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, I'd have never believed you. Her only qualifications for office are that she's Mr. Clinton's partner. And what does that mean? The two of them stand for dishonesty and corruption.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politics ....?

We may form free constitutions, but our vices will destroy them; we may enact laws, but they will not protect us.

It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be ob-tained or retained.

We cannot cure the evils of politics with politics.

American politicians do anything for money... English politicians take the money and won't do anything.

Like sin itself, Satan appeals to the senses. He originated and perfected the art of disguising evil as good.

Money is the original sin in politics and I am not sinless.

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.

They are voting whether to keep a governor two years or four. I think a good, honest governor should get four years, and the others life.

I refuse to stand by while our democracy is trampled by politicians more concerned about amassing power than helping the people who sent them to Washington in the first place.

There may be honor among thieves, but there's none in politicians.

I really felt Mitt Romney was a - not my candidate. I didn't exactly like his policies, but I thought he was an honest guy. I didn't think that he would engage in corruption. He wasn't involved in some of the things that the administration, I felt, was involved with.

Elections with integrity are a challenge everywhere, including in the West.

When power is for sale, then government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better.

Fundamental problem in American democracy is that we are allowing congressmen and senators to be bought and sold like sneakers.

There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

Parliamentarianism means putting political prostitution in barracks.

We've seen a lot of dirty politics in Ireland. We know from the French, their wonderfully neurotic presidents, that our hands are sort of tied. The Italians - I don't know where it stops. No nation can claim "We are an uncorrupt nation, therefore we will tell you what the morals of democracy are." Because it's going on everywhere.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement.

The grand larceny that occurred in Russia, the corruption that resulted in nine or ten people getting enormous wealth through loans-for-shares, was condoned because it allowed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin.