On Corruption: Words of Our Forefathers

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." ~ George Washington

“Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I'll show you a crook.” ~ Harry S. Truman

"No responsibility of government is more fundamental than the responsibility of maintaining the highest standard of ethical behavior for those who conduct the public business." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." ~ Samuel Adams

"Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind no longer." ~ Alexander Hamilton

"The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government." ~ Tacitus

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." ~ Lord Acton

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals." ~ Samuel Adams

"Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented." ~ Mark Twain

"Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people." ~ Wendell Phillips

"When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good." ~ John Adams

After a 55 year career as a professional pilot in the military, in law enforcement, in the private sector, and in federal civil service, I am now retired.

In many of these positions I repeatedly took an oath to defend the United States Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.