Zephyr Teachout Quotes

No enemy of free government is more dangerous and none so insidious as corruption.

With money we will get partisans, with partisans votes, and with votes money, is the maxim of our political pilferers.

What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.

I knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today.

Honest Graft

You can’t have a corrupt lobbyist if you don’t have a corrupt Congressman or staff member…. It’s a team effort.

Of course, in my country most political leaders are really, well, I suppose I think of them as being, well, not gangsters but more or less the same kind of thing, no? I mean—people who go in for getting elected. What can you expect of a man like that?

The boss of all bosses operates like a shifty-eyed precinct captain on the make ... These are activities on would expect of a small-time ward heeler, not a figure of such influence and stature.

The T. and P. folks are working hard on their bill. … They offered one M. C. one thousand dollars cash down, five thousand when the Bill passed and ten thousand of the bonds when they got them, if he would vote for the Bill.

When legislators do something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, there's always the suspicion that they're in somebody's pocket.

Every public institution in the United States and most private ones are corrupt.

The cold grasp of corruption shackles the District of Columbia.

Before I was elected to Congress, I helped to create the public corruption unit in the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Unfortunately, business was good. Among the usual suspects were government contracts steered to insiders - leaving Illinois taxpayers holding the bag.

In some of the countries where we operate, there is a tradition of corruption, in which the political elites work with business in the framework of unsavory relationships.

As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.

As Members of Congress, we should not be using public office for private gain.

Behind every corrupt politician are 10-20 corrupt businessmen.

Public office is supposed to be a public trust. This is a clear sign of the rampant corruption at the highest levels of the Republican leadership.

I see corruption as a mortal enemy for young democracies.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

Politics ruins the character.

President Johnson had a habit of throwing dollars at a question and the question would disappear.

I am a relatively new Member to this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic process.

The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.