Misuse of Public Funds Quotes

Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.

Corruption in government is an overwhelming problem.

Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.

One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.

Unfortunately, corruption is widespread in government agencies and public enterprises.

Corruption hits hardest at the poorest in society, those with limited or no possibilities to defend themselves. But corruption affects the whole of society as well. Decisions supposedly taken for the public good are in truth motivated by a desire for private gain and result in policies and projects that impoverish rather than enrich a country.

Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes.

The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public?

Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one.

You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.

We now know, without any shred of uncertainty, that billions of rands of public resources have been diverted into the pockets of a few.

Every government is always growing corrupt.

I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service.

The SSA's practice of allowing union activity during normal federal government operations is unfair to seniors and taxpayers.

Public officials are permitted to finance or subsidize their own activities through taxes. That is, they are permitted to engage in and live off, what in private dealings between private law subjects is prohibited and considered 'theft' and 'stolen loot.'

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.

For magistrates often changed, like hungry flies suck more blood, and as the devil rageth more because his time is short, so these magistrates, fearing soon to be recalled, are not so much bent to reform the commonwealth the fruit whereof should be reaped by the successor, as they are vigilant to enrich themselves and their followers.