Corruption Perception Quotes

Being a politician from Louisiana is emotionally difficult. Everyone you meet outside the state thinks you’re corrupt, and most of the folk in the state are sure of it.

Making money isn't something to be ashamed of. There's a feeling now that if you have money you must have got it by some kind of shady dealing or being an MP.

I prefer a thief to a Congressman. A thief will take your money and be on his way, but a Congressman will stand there and bore you with the reasons why he took it.

The impression of Pakistan is that people are corrupt. I don't think they are as corrupt as they are made out to be. I can look you in the eye and tell you I've never bribed anybody.

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.

Until the nineteen-seventies, Western countries paid little attention to corruption overseas, and bribery was seen as an unpleasant but necessary part of doing business there. In some European countries, businesses were even allowed to deduct bribes as an expense.

I belong to the film industry and it's the only industry that has no corruption.

You can see signs of a roaring economy. You can sense economic growth. You know it's happening. You're part of it. It is affecting you. Seventy-five percent of Americans think the government is corrupt.

Anyone in a position of power is either corrupt or assumed to be corrupt, and the assumption of corruption is as bad as the reality of it.

The leadership of the Palestinian Authority is not held in high regard by most of the population of the West Bank. They're seen as living relatively high off the hog and certainly not accomplishing anything vis-a-vis the Israelis.

Corruption is a fact of life in America as in Afganistan, but as American citizens, if we are white, we tend to experience it as an opportunity cost. I live in Washington, DC, where the city council is notoriously corrupt. But how do I experience that? Maybe in streets that are not as well paved as they could be, maybe in a bridge that costs a lot more money than it should have. That's a little bit abstract - shocking, of course - but still abstract.

I don't think Israelis are less critical of corruption than people in Italy, France or America. Israel is special in a different way. There is a daytime Israel and a nighttime Israel. The first is self-confident, pushy and passionate, like other Mediterranean lands. It is hedonistic, materialistic and almost arrogant. During the nighttime, people are terrified, people are filled with existential dreads. These fears aren't baseless.