Ayn Rand Quotes

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

Corruption was not merely political; it was financial, commercial, social.

If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.

Oh, that all the things my father had told me about how disgusting Washington is are true. And again it's the system - there are lots of nice, well-meaning people there. But it's a sleazy place. And politics is all about doing favors.

Honest men are the soft easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten.

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

Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer.

Most men think graft a sporadic evil, breaking out here and there, with no connection between outbreaks. I shared the same opinion, but very soon I discovered that the graft in the cities always leads to the graft in the State.

One can no longer live with people: it is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease.

I believe that cronyism is nothing more than welfare for the rich and powerful, and should be abolished.

This town was built on nepotism.

President Junior is the mascot of crony capitalism.

As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort—as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.

The managing officers were now potentates,--'railroad magnates,' 'railroad kings.' They traveled in state, surrounded by their personal staff, the heads of the different departments, who were almost as important personages as their chiefs. When they visited a town on their lines, the principal business men rushed to greet them. The fat of the land was at their disposal. Merchants sent baskets of champagne to the heads of the traffic departments and sealskin jackets to their wives, while on the other hand, special rates were liberally bestowed upon their favorites. Special clerks were required to be wholly employed in issuing free passes. Judges and juries seemed to have a perceptible bias in their favor, the brightest attorneys were retained, and minor officials were glad to grant them favors. The country press was subsidized with passes for editors, their families and their friends.

Honest Graft

If this be true, General Pinckney has kept them all for himself and cheated me out of my two.

Getting an advantage at the expense of somebody else—that really is what graft is.

Republicanism stands for vested rights, for imperialism, for graft, for the annihilation of every semblance of liberty. Its ideal is the oily, creepy respectability of a McKinley, and the brutal arrogance of a [Theodore] Roosevelt.

All riches come from iniquity, and unless one has lost, another cannot gain.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

Mr. Ten Percent

Democracies can no longer tolerate bribery, fraud and dishonesty, especially as such practices disproportionately hurt the poor.

It is assumed that every one wants some thing. Even the strictly honorable want honors. In the list of illegitimate favors are to be counted; unconscionable grants to public utilities; undeserved deposits to friendly banks; low valuation for taxation to large corporations and individuals with a pull; a complaisant building inspector; delinquent taxes allowed to remain delinquent; appropriation for public purposes of property no longer desired by the owner at a price far in excess of actual value. For the less powerful, there are grants of market or parking privileges, poor relief, indigent soldier burials, taking care of traffic citations, lending dogs from the dog pound, and so on down to the right of unmolested profitable street-begging.

The new political gospel: public office is private graft.