James Surowiecki Quotes

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.

Big business does not want honest government.

International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.

The mixing of politics and business not only is detrimental to politics, as is frequently observed, but even much more so to business.

I want to give businessmen an honorable place but they make crooks out of themselves.

Sometimes I'd say what's bad for the country is good for my business, unfortunately.

I know many businesspeople in Russia who have knowingly signed up to effectively compromise their values for their own profit motive to become part of this criminal apparatus in Russia.

For too long executive officials, businesspeople and hangers-on have enjoyed this private casino, using the payments into Fifa's account to fund their lavish lifestyles.

Nothing short of a federal investigation can begin to disclose the abuses which have woven a fine web of mutually implicating relationships between businessmen and government officials.

My concern is that we live in an economy in which stabbing someone and waiting for them to complain before we remove the knife has become the normal way of doing business. When did we lose sight of the fact that it's not nice to stab people in the first place?

An elite class that is free to operate without limits - whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior - is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power.

In all cities, the better classes - the business men - are the sources of corruption, but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes.

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a company is not allowed to provide a personal benefit to a decision maker in return for business. But hiring the sons and daughters of powerful executives and politicians is hardly just the province of banks doing business in China: it has been a time-tested practice here in the United States.

I just have a serious problem with business for business' sake: this bottom-dollar mentality. I have a serious problem with evil.

The kind of capitalism I hate most is crony capitalism, the friends who decide. These are things which should be killed in Russia.

The worst affected from corruption is the common man.

For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.

Whenever there are some who have more opportunities than others, this feeds corruption.

One of the things you learn as a journalist is that when there's no accountability, we humans are capable of tremendous avarice and venality. That's true of union bosses - and of corporate tycoons. Unions, even flawed ones, can provide checks and balances for flawed corporations.

Everyone knows that our current system is kind of like legalized prostitution. The corporate sector completely controls the civic sector.

If someone really wants my company's business, why shouldn't he be able to do everything he can - including paying me off - to get that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the business world that it distorts the efficient allocation of resources.

Business should never be allowed to justify mean, thug ugly deals for any reason.

The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.

Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.

I'm very interested in how corruption works - and it's not necessarily the way one might expect.