“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 , book The Comedians

Pt. 1, ch. 4, sct. 3
The Comedians (1966)

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Graham Greene 164

English writer, playwright and literary critic 1904–1991

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“that the Messenger of Allah (saw) said: "The curse of Allah is upon the one who offers a bribe and the one who takes it."”

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“The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder…
Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.”

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“A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.”

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“There is a fine line in the Third World between half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe and half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe so they can throw you in jail.”

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“... Christ does not bow before the Father in supplication that God will have mercy on his own children, but rather that Christ endlessly is at work with and within man, by all the ways open to love—without coercion, or bribing, or favoritism—to effect a unity, an at-one-ment between man and God.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

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“The mob has always behaved in this way—eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured.”

Étienne de La Boétie book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

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“Most business executives accept that bribes and grease money are costs of doing business in "soft "states.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

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“You cannot hope
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British journalist.

But, seeing what
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no occasion to.”

Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940) English poet

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“The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

“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.”

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