Undue Influence Quotes

Give the votes to people who have no property and they will sell them to the rich, who will be able to buy them.

The polls are just being used as another tool of voter suppression. The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it. Yours. They want to depress the heck out of you.

I could not afford to hang men for votes.

We have the best government that money can buy.

No enemy of free government is more dangerous and none so insidious as corruption.

I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Mr. Ten Percent

Representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors [voters] are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them

Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.

Congress leaders will now come to offer you money. I suggest you take the money but don't vote for them.

Both political parties, Republicans and Democrats, are dependent on the same private interest groups for campaign funds, so both parties dance to the same masters.

I get really, really concerned when I see somebody, taking $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, will not release what they're actually saying. That's concerning.

Corrupt Bargain

... he [Thomas E. Dewey] is a political streetwalker accosting men with "come home with me dear.

Crony capitalism is not capitalism - it is cronyism.

There has never yet been, among political men, any real and serious attempt to prevent [election] bribery, because there has been no real desire that elections should not be costly. Their costliness is an advantage to those who can afford the expense, by excluding a multitude of competitors.

Our current Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, took that which had been named corrupt for over 200 years [gifts to politicians] and renamed it legitimate..

If not checked the power of money will soon control the elections of the President, the senators and the members of the House of representatives.

For more than a decade, Novartis spent hundreds of millions of dollars on so-called speaker programs, including speaking fees, exorbitant meals, and top-shelf alcohol that were nothing more than bribes to get doctors across the country to prescribe Novartis's drugs.

Politicians can be bought and often are.

Somehow it did not occur to us that, in a developed democracy, regular media advertising could turn out to be a suspicious and harmful activity.

Lobbynomics

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

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

Deciding whether a contribution is corrupt is difficult without knowing the motives of the donor.