I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect — it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman. – Graham Greene
Every civilization when it loses its inner vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort. An Augean stable of metallic filth. – D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
Wherever you see a man who gives someone elses corruption, someone elses prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us. – John Jay Chapman