John Edwards Quotes

Washington is rigged to favor people who have an army of lobbyists.

Sadly we have government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists. That is no way to run the Senate.

The special interests are protected in Washington and the public interest is submerged.

The use of such means and such agents [paid lobbyists] will have the effect to subject the State governments to the combined capital of wealthy corporations, and produce universal corruption, commencing with the representative and ending with the elector. Speculators in legislation, public and private, a compact corps of venal solicitors, vending their secret influences, will infest the capital of the Union and of every State, till corruption shall become the normal condition of the body politic.

Many Americans have sensed there is a very corrupt pay-to-play system going on in Washington.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

[Lobbying] has reached such a position of power that it threatens the government itself. Its size, its power, its capacity for evil; its greed, trickery, deception and fraud condemn it to the death it deserves.

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.

Government unions should not be allowed to influence the public officials they are lobbying, and sitting across the bargaining table from, through campaign donations and expenditures.

Businesses have moved from doing business to doing lobbying, and I think that's a very bad thing.

The first iron rule of American politics is Follow the Money. This explains, oh, about 80 percent of what goes on in Washington.

You've got to just follow the money [in Washington]. You see it. There's no countervailing power.

We have the best government that money can buy.

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

Two million dollars is only small when you're talking about Washington, D.C.

Washington's a cesspool of money.

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

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

The problem is we have a Wall Street-to-Washington access of power that has controlled the political climate. The donor class feeds the political class who does the dance that the donor class wants. And the result is federal government keeps getting bigger.

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

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

Wall Street's outsized influence in our nation's capital is something I've talked about for a long time - long before I even thought about running for office. But where I see a problem - an infestation, really - a lot of others in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to see government working just fine.

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.

The corporate flacks, hacks, lobbyists, and influence peddlers, the practitioners of modern PR ... have become a kind of occupation army in our democracy.

I noticed that the highly organized lobbies in Washington were producing results regardless of the justice or injustice of their demand.