Ben Mendelsohn Quotes

I think the American government is now the most corrupt government in the world.

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.

When scrutiny is lacking, tyranny, corruption and man's baser qualities have a better chance of entering into the public business of any government.

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object -- the happiness of man -- to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests.

Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.

The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed; it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession; it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.

We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence.

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

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.

I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.

I'm not sure why, but I seem to be drawn to stories about abuses of power. But I'm also drawn, not so much to victims' stories, as stories that tend to show how power works. Because if you don't understand the criminals, you can't figure out how to stop the crimes.

I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.

Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.

When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.

The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.

The walls are raised against honest men in civic life.

Palestinians are painfully aware that their government is rife with corruption.

King William and the chief men loved gold and silver and did not care how sinfully it was obtained provided it came to them. He did not care at all how wrongfully his men got possession of land nor how many illegal acts they did.

Every link in the chain that runs from the corporation desiring political favors down to the policeman on the beat levying his toll on the prostitute or the apple-seller is too strong to have been broken yet.

Exploitation and government are two inseparable expressions of what is called politics.

Most governments are designed for the purposes of oppression and personal ambition.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations perverted it into tyranny.